The Shadows of Cinders
by Akira Serenada
Summary: She refuses to fail them. She refuses to let what happened in her past curse the ones that she loves now. And now, irony of all ironies, she is drawn to the one she failed before to try and prevent it all. FemExile/Atton, among things.
1. Prologue

_A/N: Hello and welcome to my first Star Wars: KOTOR II fanfic! I really do want to continue it on, and updates will be made as quickly as I can write them...which will hopefully be more often than I think right now. Some of it is still in development. But as more of a treat to myself than anyone else, I'm going to start it up right here, right now, so maybe I will actually feel the draw to get it planned out correctly. All right! Well enough of my useless banter-thingy. On with the Show!_

_Disclaimer: Please insert the obligatory disclaimer here. Be sure to include that the true owner of KOTOR and any of the characters (except for OCs) is not me but some higher power that is surely very great._

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* * *

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_I didn't have a choice. There was no choice. I had no choice._

These were the words I chose to comfort myself. These were the lies I chanted in my head until I could somehow manage to believe them, until I could somehow gather up the strength to leave…until I could walk blindly into the darkness that I knew I had to face.

Were they lies though, in the end?

There are some that say that there is always a choice, for it is choice that drives the universe. It is choice that determines fate. It is choice that drives the Force.

And yet, we are vessels of the Force?

Tell me, how does this reconcile?

How do we have choice if the Force determines our very destinies, no matter if we believe we are ready for them or not? What if I wanted a different path? What if I was willing to cling to a different path with all of my heart, to scream out against the crushing destiny I was believed to possess?

Did it really matter in the end?


	2. One: Of Fire and Irony

Disclaimer: If only I owned KOTOR II. Then, you know, it would have been completed, including an Exile/Atton romance. But I don't, so I wrote this. Heh!

A/N: Great Force. Forgive the messiness. It appears that in my haste and excitement to publish something, I had overlooked some things. I'll try not to do it again. I beg forgiveness.

* * *

_Malachor V Space, Post-Traya._

"_Ember, no!" _

"_Somebody get me a life support pack _now_!"_

"_Ember! Stay with us, damn it!"_

Voices. So many beautiful, familiar voices, pricks of tiny light in the pool of blackness I could not escape. The pool of blackness I was not meant to escape. Not _then_, the first time on Malachor, and especially not now, this second time that really should never have existed.

The pain burned just beneath my skin, like insects crawling where I couldn't reach, eating at me. Emptiness was sure to follow. Maybe I was never meant to leave Malachor in the first place. Maybe the Masters were right. Maybe my existence went against all laws of the universe, of the Force. Maybe it would be a good thing for everyone if I just died, right here.

_Maybe, just maybe…_

_"No."_

I gasped for the pain of the familiar voice, the voice I didn't expect to hear again. The voice that haunted me – the whisper that swirled within my mind like a summer breeze on Dantooine, soft and gone within moments, hardly a tremor left to remember its presence by. But the ache, woven into the single, whispered word stuck with me in too many ways, so many ways…

_Atton._

I struggled to respond, to do something to fight this burning, but a great heaviness descended and I could not move. The pain was becoming unbearable. So badly did I want to speak, to tell him that I would be alright anyway, if only to comfort him for a moment. It was what he deserved.

And suddenly, like a hiss of a lightsaber pushing through my skull, I _felt_ the words that would condemn me forever and brand me for eternity, hurting so much more because they were my words.

_This is your destiny. This is your blessing and your curse for surviving in the first place._

And that was when I drifted.

* * *

And then, I emerged. There was nothing before, and suddenly, I heard everything again. I felt everything, the soft song that spoke of volumes and worlds...

Just like before. Just like last time…

* * *

And then it hit me. I _was_ actually awake.

I almost laughed. I considered it for a half of a moment, despite the dull pain that was coursing through my muscles, one by one, as they awoke again too.

Force knows why. They had always said I had a strange sense of humor, during the War, and it was choosing now to return. It was one of those things you develop as a defense mechanism, and it was one I hadn't managed to lose, I suppose.

But then it began to hurt too much to really think of laughing. Darkness hung before my vision like a dark cloak, too tired to open my eyes, too tired to move anything at all except my hands, clenching into fists as I scrambled to find my center, my pinpoint of light that would let me escape this again, if only for a moment

"Ember?"

I took in a sharp breath as what I could only describe as softness spread over my entire body, and again, I was scrambling. From some of my deepest reserves, I pulled forth just enough energy to finally open my eyes.

But it was thoroughly useless.

The scalding white brightness of the medical bay made my eyes sting so sharply that I was forced to close them again, even though I wanted so much to see _him_ and what exactly he was doing, just so I could comfort him, if only for a moment…

That was when something else hit me.

Panic crawled up my throat and escaped as a pained cry, despite the warmth that was slowly spreading through my body. Again, I forced my eyes open, and in the next thoughtless moment, I tried to rise. The instinct to search for my friends overtook everything else until the pain returned, so sudden and fierce that I collapsed backward.

"Ember! Ah, frack!"

After a few moments of recoil, my eyes flew open, much easier the second time. The pain had receded just as quickly as it came, as if my muscles had remembered the softness and the warmth on its own and were reacting accordingly. In the next instant, my eyes were focused on the only other person in the room.

"Atton?" I breathed. He was across the room, staring at both his hands in utter horror, leaning as close to the far wall as he could. For a few moments, I could only stare at him in wonderment and confusion, questions forming with every moment I was conscious. The very fact I was conscious posed a question in itself.

"Atton…what are you doing?" was what I decided upon first.

He turned his stricken, feather-grey eyes to me.

"I—sorry. I didn't mean…Mical said I probably should just…" He trailed off, visibly grasping for the words that he needed but would not come. I tried to smile at him. From his pained expression, I could tell that it didn't work.

"You followed Mical's directions for once?" I managed to ask as lightly as I could, feigning surprise. Finally, a ghost of a smile played at his lips.

"Uh, that'd be a no, considering I'm even near you," he said. But even the slight, Atton-like sarcasm didn't last long, and he looked to be adamantly refusing to come any closer to me than he already was.

I just gazed at him, too tired to do much else. Instead, I projected my worries through the Force, entwining my questions about the crew and the questions about his peculiar behavior into one strand of thought.

_Is everyone ok?_ I asked him first, hoping he was willing to be in tune with me.

He gave me a sharp nod, but no smile of reassurance. "Everyone's fine. Except…Bao-dur hasn't really been doing too well, and we can't quite get _why_. He's just…empty. Depressed."

He looked off into the distance for a moment, distracted.

"Well, actually, _we all_ know why. Considering what the hell just happened out there." His mouth tweaked into the slightest of frowns as he cast me a quick glance, like he was considering something. "He's just as banged up as you, if not worse. But before you freak out again, he's stabilized. We think he'll make it."

I said nothing, even though my heart fell. The soft-spoken mechanic was hurt because of me, of course.

I turned ever so slowly to stare at the ceiling, and we fell into an almost awkward silence that lasted several moments. I would have thought that he had left, except for the fact that I could feel his fluctuating presence in the Force brush against mine.

"Ember," he said finally. "I…I didn't hurt you, did I?"

Again, I turned to look at him, puzzled. He sounded so…small. Concerned in a way that was trying to conceal itself from the moment it was revealed. But obviously and clearly upset.

"What?" I whispered, my voice scratchy. "Why?"

He struggled with himself, fidgeting. His thrust his hands into the pockets of his favorite pair of brown pants.

"I tried to heal you," he half-whispered. "And then you…you sounded like you were in pain. I thought I had done something…"

_Oh._

He sounded so concerned, so worried that I fought the urge to reach my arms out to him, to touch him and tell him that it was hardly his fault, anything that had happened. I was the one who had dragged him into this mess. He shouldn't even really have been here because_ I_ shouldn't really have even been here…

But I was, and the Force acted strangely, so here we were.

"Oh, no, no, no…I just panicked for a second, that's all," I managed. "I was afraid you all had…died because of me. I wanted to find you."

I put it as bluntly as I could, for the words, small as they were, tired me out. My body was in full blown healing mode and demanded sleep.

But I could also put two and two together. I knew now that the soft warmth I had felt within the darkness had been Atton all along, and this comforted me to an almost obnoxious extent. He was my Jedi Padawan, after all. Yet, why I was even in such pain in the first place was something I did _not_ know.

"Oh," he said, which were my sentiments exactly. There was another long pause before either of us got the gumption to speak again.

"Well, you shouldn't scare people like that. Causes problems," he said flippantly, finally taking a few steps toward me since he realized he hadn't done anything wrong.

"I'll try harder next time I destroy a planet," I replied, fighting back a small smile.

And then, surprisingly enough (even though, by now, it shouldn't have surprised me), he stood there in silence for a few more moments. His face twisted up, almost as if he was angry, and my eyes widened in confusion. I reached out to him with a tendril of the Force – instinctively, as it usually was most of the time now – and almost hit the wall of mental Pazaak. But he reconsidered and let me in instead, his face twisting up even more, like he was ashamed.

I tried not to delve too deeply, as I didn't have the energy or the desire to enter the places where neither of us wanted to go. But after a mere moment, I found the emotion I was searching for…and the reason.

My heart hollowed out. I would have cried out for it.

He was in just as much pain as I was, but not in the physical sense. He was reeling from all that had happened, just as I was, and couldn't understand why it hurt him so, just as it was with me. Either way it was my fault...again.

And then, just as suddenly, a door was slammed into my face, the anger I was searching for very forcefully _thrown_ at me instead. I recoiled and left immediately, poisoned by the marks it had left on my own mind, shocked as to why he would react that way.

"Frack!" he shouted, plastering a hand to his forehead. I could not understand the implications behind his voice, and as I was still reeling, felt that I didn't really want to know anyway.

"Sorry," I breathed, my voice shaking. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean…"

All of a sudden, he was right beside me. I felt his hand tenderly, hesitantly rest on my shoulder just as I was turning away from him, for his sake. "Ember…no, your fine. I just…"

He was struggling for words again. I held my breath in wait.

"You're going to give me grey hairs early and its making me kind of depressed. I take pride in my full, brown hair. Hairdressers dream about it you know," he said quietly, only half-heartedly. He was also rambling, something he did when he wasn't in the best of moods. "How the hell am I supposed to protect you if you keep running off into trouble like you don't give a gizga's backside, huh? Do you want to die?"

I said nothing. I thought about the pain, that murky place in my mind where all I could hear were voices and all I wanted to do was die, if only to heal the galaxy. If only to make it all stop.

My non-answer, as it seemed, only made his anger worse. It was rolling off of him in waves – and twined in a terrible desperation that I automatically cringed from.

"Well, good job then. You almost did. You almost got caught in an explosion that would have meant the end of everything. Do you want a round of applause?" he snapped.

"Atton, stop."

"No, I'm not going to stop! If you die, do you even know what'll happen? No wait, let me rephrase. Do you even care?" He was on a roll, it seemed. He wasn't going to stop anytime soon, no matter how much I cringed away from the desperate, longing emotions that were reaching out from him, wrapping around me like a cold embrace.

"What do you _want_, Atton?" I asked quietly. I tried to make my voice stop trembling so I could sound forceful and angry instead of wounded, but it was to no avail.

However, it did make him go quiet. The hot anger spitting and swimming around him almost instantly cooled, falling into a kind of remorse that hurt even worse.

"Ember Tythael," he whispered. I would have looked at him, if only to further understand what he meant by that, but I was drowning in the remorse. I didn't understand anyway.

Not that it mattered. In the next moment, I felt the presence of Visas snake into the room. When I found the energy to roll over to look at her, she was flanked by Mical and Mira. None of them looked pleased.

"Atton, you are not supposed to be in here," Visas said firmly but with that ethereal calm that embodied her. Mira, on the other hand, just looked annoyed.

"Do you ever listen? Do you want her to get hurt again?" Mira asked, and again, I felt that strange urge to laugh.

That was irony, wasn't it? In a way? Because that seemed to be exactly what Atton and I had been talking about, about me _not_ getting hurt, and then they assume that he might accidentally hurt me.

Atton had a strange look that I could only think of as a mix between amusement and annoyance. His mouth twitched upward, but then settled into a frown. Maybe he thought it was funny too.

"Is something funny to you, Atton?" Mical asked, annoyance flashing in his ice blue eyes, all too perceptive for his own good.

Atton smirked at him, but there was no feeling in it. He cast me a long, suffocatingly soft, tender glance before he glared at Mical. "Don't count on it, pretty boy" he remarked darkly.

And then he was gone.

It was disorienting. But I was too tired to notice, my physical needs overcoming my desire to meditate or think upon why I was in such pain or what had happened or anything like that.

And yet, in order to keep my sanity, with what energy I could, I tried not to think of Atton. Even as my dreams twined together with rational thought, I tried not to think of what I had seen. I tried until the threads of dreams faded into the black tapestry that was falling before my eyes.

_Sleep now…_said a voice, one that should have been familiar but one I couldn't hold onto long enough to figure out why.

I could only oblige. I could only sleep.

* * *

A/N: And so it begins! Thanks for reading and all of that. Hopefully, it'll get better as the chapters go on. Next will be in Atton's POV I think. Review, if you have the time. I appreciate comments.


	3. Two: The Threshold of Glass

A/N: Huge shout out to those who took the time to review last time -- you rock! And also a big thanks to those that read it at all. Makes me happy.

This is a long chapter, in case you haven't noticed. And towards the end it kind goes...neehh...but, I think it'll do. Forgive any mistakes. A lot seems to be stuffed into here, but it was a bit necessary. At any rate, enjoy the Atton Perspective. :)

And yes, he does like to say "Something up?".

Happy Weekend everybody!

Disclaimer: I do not own anything when it comes to the KOTOR Universe, though I would be a very blessed and put upon person if I did. ;)

* * *

Chapter Two – The Threshold of Glass

_Peragus Administration Level_

"_So who names their kid Ember, anyway?"_

_Interestingly enough, these words are the ones that fall out of his mouth first. Not, of course, that he cares or anything. She finally turns away from the Peragus administration panel, her choppy black bangs brushing over her pale olive cheek bones while the rest barely rests on her shoulders. _

_He again notes how strangely, chokingly innocent her eyes are compared to her tough-girl, neo-punk hair style. They are an unassuming brown, like leather._

_Still, the only response she gives is a rising of a brow._

_"What? Did I offend you, Lady Jedi?" he asks her pointedly, if only to get her talking to him._

_He tries not to care that she will hardly utter a word to him, even though a part of him yells caution for every moment he is close to her. A part of him wants to run far, far away from her, because a part of him knows that she cannot be good news. It is a strange mixture of reflexes until one cancels out the other and he is left there, unmoving and unable to stop himself from trying _something_._

_But everything about this situation is strange._

_"I mean, Ember Tythael? Kind of a mouthful."_

_She just shakes her head. He notices that her brow is furrowed like she is angry, even though her eyes betray otherwise._

_"And Atton Rand is so much better? Who names their kid Atton anyway?"_

_But still, there were places where even she shouldn't be going. So that was when he decided, finally, to shut up._

* * *

_Atton_

It's a strange thing, memory. There are some things you want to remember but for some reason, you simply can't. There are also some things you really, _really_ want to forget, but it happens that they always seem to be the things that still linger even as your bones turn to dust.

And there then are the things that you believe at first to have no relevance to anything at all whatsoever, and still, your memory stores them away.

Like, for instance…

I remembered, with sudden, almost painfully sharp clarity, how her nose crinkled when she laughed. Or how she almost looks angry when she focuses because her eyes become so intensely alert and her forehead furrows as if she was frustrated with herself.

I'm not sure _why_.

It's just that when I look into the med-bay and see her lying there, looking so empty, I just want to replace it with something else. Something normal. Something I'd be familiar with so it doesn't feel like I damn failed _again_.

When she's awake, at least, she shows more on her face, but there was really only one main thing that I could see as of late. Ember was tired. And not the "I'm going to sleep it off" kind of tired, but more like the kind of tired that could almost kill a person. Her eyes glowed a little dimmer; her oh so radiant aura was nothing more than the slightest of glimmers now.

I suppose I could understand some of it.

I mean, she just knocked off three Sith lords. In a row. One of them being one of our ex-comrades, old witch – or, excuse me, Kreia.

I might never have like the old bantha woman, but everyone could feel her absence, like there was a strange hole within the dynamic that is our ragtag team. Maybe she had that happen on purpose, to spite us all to hell. But even _I_ was half expecting her to comment on how the ship was tilted 3 degrees to far to the left for her liking.

So that was one thing.

And then Malachor went and blasted itself to smithereens.

So it was pretty much a lot to take in at once _already_, and it didn't help that Ember was actually hurt for Force knows what reason.

Not that it mattered, anyway, the reason. She was so fracking intent on getting herself killed that I really had no reason to even be here now that the old witch and her old buddies from the grave were all dead and long gone, unless I wanted another panic attack.

It was disturbing, at the very least, because our indestructible leader happened to be very destructible. More so than other people, even.

It was the final straw when she touched me with the Force, and I felt everything she was feeling and she saw everything that I've felt. I wanted her out. It was too much like a memory and not like something that was real, something I could touch and therefore be something I could trust. It was too much like a memory that would cling to my poisoned little soul until I was nothing but dust myself.

Ember would hate me for thinking like that. I know her well enough.

And so, it was the perfect excuse, when Mical and his sisterly do-goods arrived to take over the scene. While her pain screamed harsh chords over and over in my head, I knew there was nothing else I could do even if a part of me _thought_ I could do something. Wanted to do something.

Still, there is only so much a man, even one such as myself, can take.

So I left.

A meaningless gesture, because in the end, I would be staying. As usual. As always. Because maybe, in the end, I didn't want to escape.

* * *

Days began to pass, if you wanted to call them that. They were more like collections of time that were strung together merely because of circumstance. As it always happened with space travel, time slowed to a hardly tolerable crawl.

As time passed, the minutes grew longer. More tedious. More maddening. Especially as I got to thinking, which was never a good thing.

If I remembered correctly, Ember's main mission (and, as consequences, ours) was to find the hidden Jedi masters, who she was convinced would help her in the fight against the Sith and somehow give her the answers to her gnawing questions.

But of course, the Council couldn't have helped her. She may have lived through the wars, but she was a naïve one for thinking that they would give her any answers except the cryptic or those that she didn't want to hear. This time it happened to be a mix of both, and all I had to say is that I'm glad she got away at all, considering the circumstances.

And, well, they couldn't be much help dead, either. Only a slight demotion if you ask me, but hey, no one did…

Even so, now that they were dead…what were we supposed to do now? What _were _we doing, besides floating away from Malachor? What purpose did we have together, as a unit?

I felt a strange sickness rise in my stomach, so I sat in my usual chair in the cockpit and began my attempts to ignore it.

As I didn't feel like doing anymore repairing, I decided to play pazaak again, with myself. There were no other takers, since Ember was still kind of out of it (sleeping and all that) and Mira was nursing a general grudge against the game ever since she claimed I cheated. Mical never had a taste for it (no surprise there) and Bao-dur was automatically out of commission.

And T3 didn't count. Neither did HK.

Maybe Visas…but then again, no. Maybe not Visas.

In my mind, the cards reset, but it had become so natural to me that my mind subconsciously lingered to other thoughts. Which was totally against the point of what I was trying to do.

_What _are_ you trying to do, Rand? Hide away in your little card deck?_

Yeah, I am actually.

_Honest man, at least._

Still, I wondered what we were to do now that the Sith were also dead. What did she have in mind?

_Flip the +2, -2 card, the totals are 2, -2…_

Did she have a plan at all?

_Flip the +5 card, the totals are 3 and 7 for me…_

Hell, did she even care?

_Flip another +2 card, the totals are 5 and 9…flip the +6 card…_

I had to wonder what the old witch had said to her within the dark academy. It couldn't have just been the implosion or the crash that hurt her so badly. She was tough. She could handle most things like that because she was the strongest woman I'd ever known.

But there were some things…

_…Right, the totals are 11 and 15…Flip the +7 card, the totals are 18 and 22…flip…_

Why didn't she care that she got hurt? What if she plans on…

_No. Stop. Flip the +2, -2 card, the totals are 20 and 20. Start again, next round…_

_Forget it._

I couldn't stop. I couldn't stop thinking. I couldn't stop wondering just what I was supposed to do now that my life was somewhat back together again, even within this strangeness that was chaos. What was I supposed to do if she planned on leaving us all for good? If she planned on somehow dumping _herself_ off for good, forgetting all about everyone else simply because the Masters said she was going to be the death of the Force?

Would that happen? _Could_ I _let _that happen? Most of us had become her little Padawans as of late (of course, that arrangement was about as formal as our little yacht, the Ebon Hawk, here…), and that surely held some kind of leverage, some sort of old law or other. Not, of course, that I depended on that…this group knew only too well how nicely the old teachings or whatever could be counted on around these parts.

Maybe she just wanted to forget about everything and end it all.

And, within it all, she'd forget about me too.

A strange, sinking feeling invaded my chest, spreading from my stomach, widening until it was all too noticeable for someone who wasn't moving. I had to move. I had to run. I had to do something or else it would spread out and swallow me whole. I whipped around, away from the dancing, hypnotic lights of the Outer Rim, and walked straight back, not sure where I was headed.

_This is pathetic_, I said to myself.

_No crap, whiz kid. I've been trying to tell you that all along, _sneered the side of me I liked, the pragmatic side that always had something snarky to say. However, it also happened to be the side of me that was ignored. The side that was oft-times kept uptight in the back of my mind, hardly even considered if Ember was anywhere in the vicinity…

_This isn't healthy,_ I said again.

_Huh. Funny you're walking towards the med-bay and you say it isn't healthy…_

I frowned. Of course I would be walking towards the med-bay! Of course I would be drawn to her, like a fracking moth to a burning pyre, even though I knew it would do no good and heal nothing. It would only make everything worse because she probably wouldn't have any answers for me anyway.

But at least I was able to stop myself on the threshold.

I looked at her face. I didn't know what I expected to see, so I didn't know what I was looking for. Her sleeping face was clear of emotion, except for a line of consternation across her forehead that recently appeared and would not disappear. Her eyes twitched, like she was going to wake up, and I took a sudden step back, just so she wouldn't wake up and see me staring at her.

And, wouldn't you know it, I ran into Mical.

We stared at each other for a second. He blinked his obnoxiously large blue eyes at me.

"Hi," I said. His eyes widened even more when I spoke, and I considered walking away from the ridiculousness of it all. But it struck me that he wasn't just walking by…the way his eyes darted behind me, into the med-bay and then back at me again only piqued my interest.

"Something up?" I asked slowly, just to be sure he caught that I was speaking to him again. It wasn't like I went out of my way to talk to him usually…

"What are you doing here?" he asked. It wasn't necessarily cruel or sharp sounding, but I got the idea that he didn't exactly want me anywhere near Ember.

"Good question," I said. A slight grin crept onto my face at his slight annoyance. He was just so darn fun to annoy.

He said nothing. He just looked behind me and sighed. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, and instead (despite the misgivings of my pragmatic side) turned back to cast Ember another glance.

I thought about it for a moment.

And then I realized that she didn't look like a normal sleeping person. Sleeping people didn't have lines of consternation on their forehead, unless they were in the midst of a nightmare. Sleeping people didn't clench their sheets with their fists either. I frowned at her, and debated with myself over if or when I should wake her up. When was I allowed to wake her? When she started screaming?

Instantly, I shut out the image and turned to Mical to try and forget it. _That_ was too much of an invitation for memories I didn't want, especially anywhere near thoughts of Ember. The darkness of then and the grey-light of now clashed so horribly that it jarred my senses, leaving me breathless, confused, and without an identity to cling to.

And yet, as it always did, my pride somehow managed to spring forth. Mical had never been one of my favorites, but I had to admit, he was pretty good with a medpac. So maybe, just maybe, he would have some idea of what exactly was going on here. Or at least a new one that I hadn't heard already.

My pride still yelled at me for "sinking to his level".

But I still gave in and asked. A tiny part of me whispered that this was because Ember's health was more important than my pride. Exponentially.

"How she doing?"

He sighed and shrugged his shoulders, frustrated, but not with me. "Physically, she's perfectly fine. A few scratches and bruises of course, but nothing her Jedi training couldn't take care of on her own. There was a rather large laceration in between her shoulder blades – "

Again, I blocked the image out of my mind. I glanced back at her for a moment, but of course, her expression hadn't changed. I sighed slightly, and continued to listen to him.

" – but that was fixed up alright."

I nodded. Of course it was. Of course she was alright. I already knew this sithspit – I didn't know why my stomach still knotted at the thought of it.

Still. I compared my image of her sleeping form with the suffering I had witnessed from that tense moment when we had just barely escaped from Malachor. For brief moments (my Jedi training being to blame, no doubt), I had felt her pain. With the slightest of images, I had seen that she considered dying. _Just for the heck of it._

"Atton?" I heard Mical ask. It was then that I snapped alert again and turned to face him.

"Right. So she's…she's not sick then?"

"I…don't know. She doesn't have a fever anymore, but she is awfully tired for someone who has been sleeping so much. It's not normal."

"Oh, give her a break," I said wearily, the words falling out of my mouth before I could think. "She just fought _three Sith lords_ in a row. Only _after _witnessing the deaths of three of her former masters and being forced to save Telos from utter destruction. On top of that --"

I only stopped when I saw Mical shooting me a really strange, almost funny look. One of his eyebrows was raised and his mouth was hanging slightly open. It was only then that I realized I was going on and on…and that he probably didn't even mean it the way I thought he did.

"Atton, I wasn't trying to say – "

I just waved it off, trying to hide my slight embarrassment even if Mical really wasn't faring that much better than me.

"Sorry," I managed to say. Even to Mical, I could be decent. "I'm just concerned."

I gave him a moment to recover. "You're concern is noted," he said, with the slightest of smiles on his pretty-boy face.

"Just coverin' the bases," I replied with a small smirk. But then I turned away, to face Ember head on. It fell away, the cockiness, as it usually did when I faced her. I let another quiet moment pass me by. Mical, interestingly enough, hadn't moved yet either.

"What did she do to herself?" I asked him quietly.

He just shook his head. "I wish I knew. But I think it might have had something to do with the Force Bond she once held with Kreia. Those don't just disappear, as far as I'm concerned...but maybe it even has a little to do with the crushing of Malachor. She had many memories here and many connections could still have survived here, even maybe within the things we see as lifeless. Maybe there was…energy stored in Malachor that she was somehow connected to."

I sighed. Ember was the strongest woman I knew – and in many ways, also the most put upon, weighed down, damaged girl I knew too.

"My guess is that now that it is all officially gone…her mind recoiled. The _Force_ recoiled," he said. "Any bonds she had left there are now completely broken. And again, she's left to recover."

"Oh," I said, because I was eloquent like that.

I didn't know much about Force Bonds, or whatever, but they never ended up working out too well in the end. People died. The Force shrieked. And as people died, others were blamed in an attempt to put a reason and a why to something that can't really be explained.

The Masters were quick to blame Ember for everything. I didn't believe it.

"Atton –" began Mical, but he stopped short.

And then, because my life works like that, there was a very sharp stirring in what I could only assume to be the Force. It felt as though something was tugging on my mind and sinking straight into my bloodstream, slithering, unwanted, all throughout my body and forcing my muscles to tense in expectation. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

I glanced at Mical. From his wide-eyed expression, I could only assume he felt it too.

"What's going on?" I began, but then, without thinking, I swirled around to face Ember, suddenly feeling as through something was –

That's when I heard her gasp, as if in pain. Her face scrunched together, as if she was holding back a scream, and her fists clenched so tight that her knuckles turned as white as the bed sheets.

In another moment, Mical and I were next to her bed. I shook her shoulders violently, trying to force her to awaken, so I could tell her it was just a crazy nightmare. Behind me, I heard Visas and Mira enter the room, frantically asking what was going on. _Of course_, I thought, _because this ship is full of fracking Force Sensitives…_

And then, Ember's eyes shot open, boring directly into mine. My spine shivered as burning energy shot through my body, leaving me to feel as though I was falling a thousand stories toward a glass frame. The haunted look in her window-like eyes held enough force to throw me from the ship, flailing all the way into oblivion.

I immediately took a few steps back, to give her space, to give her (and myself) time to recover from whatever had just happened. She was breathing heavily and her brown eyes were wide from a fear that she was scrambling to mask as she began to sit up.

I read her body language automatically: it was that of…defense. Self-defense, like she was trying to protect the mid portion of herself from being torn away, the way she wrapped her arms around it. When her eyes shifted toward me, they glinted in defiance, like she dared me to move. Like she dared me to say something about what had just occured.

Then, all of a sudden, it was erased. She slowly sat up straight and stared at us as we stared back at her. I saw color creep up on her cheeks.

"Is something up?" I asked. Mira pushed up beside me to see what was going on. Visas did the same, only not so obnoxiously.

Ember's attention shifted toward me, and she shook her head…then reconsidered.

"Actually…yes. Mical?"

I steamed, but said nothing as Mical stepped forward. Of all the nerve. "Yes, Ember?"

"Is Bao-dur still unconscious?"

"Actually, no," he responded willingly. "He's quite awake now, and he is sorry. He would very much like to speak with you, apparently."

She nodded, as if expecting this. Her mouth turned down a little. "Yes, I thought as much. I'm glad he's awake. Can you go and speak to him for me? Tell him that we're going to have a group discussion, if you don't mind," she ordered kindly and probably without even knowing she was giving orders.

_A group discussion. Yeah-rah._

Mical immediately consented, bowing slightly (_A bow! Was this kid serious?_) before he slipped out of the room.

"Hello Mira, Visas. How are you?" Ember asked, as if it was any other day. I rolled my eyes. She cast me a slight, amused smile.

"The same as we have been for the last two or three days," Mira responded, with her usual nonchalance. Visas cracked a smile. Ember did too.

"Which means, we're bored out of our minds," I added in helpfully.

"Pretty much," said Mira.

"You are doing much better now, it seems," Visas said to Ember, ignoring Mira and I's banter, though unable to erase the smile on her face. Ember just shrugged.

"The powers of sleep, I suppose."

I glanced at Visas. While her eyes (or lack of) were as covered as they always were, I could tell that she wasn't buying it either. However, the Miraluka was bounds more intuitive than I was.

"Come, sister huntress. We should probably go and see to Bao-dur, now that he is awake," she advised to her red-haired comrade. With a last wave at Ember, Mira stalked after Visas from the stark white of the med-bay.

She was giving Ember space. Which was far more intuitive than anything I was doing, which was standing around, watching her like an idiot.

Ember stared at me too. It was a little unnerving.

"Shouldn't you be lying down, and_ not_ skipping around the ship, prepping for our next fantastic adventure?" I asked, crossing my arms and leaning against the wall, as I always did.

"I told you. I feel fine now."

I glared at her. "Don't play with me, Ember. You know I don't buy that sithspit."

She frowned again, only further proving my point. I stood there, silent, expecting her to give in and tell me what was really going on, part of me really hoping that she would for my own sake if anything else.

But of course, she didn't.

"Just help me up," she mumbled. "My legs feel like jelly."

So I did. I walked over and pulled her up. She was lighter than usual.

She took two steps and about tripped on her own two feet. I had to catch her.

"What Jedi is clumsy?" I asked her, slightly annoyed.

"I redefine the standard," she said with mock sincerity. And against my will, I cracked a smile.

* * *

And so, the meeting began in the Starboard Dormitory, with Bao-dur presiding on the floor. He didn't look in the least bit uncomfortable – at least, not in that moment. As I followed Ember into the room, he was all smiles for her.

"Hello, General. You look healthy," he greeted politely, in his eternally calm voice and with that dry-wit smile I had come to expect from him. She snorted amusedly.

"Well, you didn't see me a couple of days ago," she said, looking as though she was fit to be laughing. And wasn't.

Bao-dur sighed at that. "Yes, I know. I'm awfully sorry about – " he gestured to himself, "this."

She waved him off. "Of course. There's nothing to be sorry about, Bao-dur. It was my fault for getting you into this in the first place."

I rolled my eyes. "Ok, can we get this meeting started before this turns into some 'let's feel sorry for ourselves' fest?"

Mira, sitting lazily on one of the beds, tried to hide her snickering. Visas hardly acknowledged me as she sat on the other side of Bao-dur, and neither did Ember. It kind of stung. And I didn't even know if Mical noticed me or anyone else at all – he just sat there, smiling at Ember from one of the beds.

"Of course. We don't want Atton to get bored," Bao-dur added in, strangely cheerful for someone whose arms and head were all bandaged up. T3 booped as he pushed by me into the room, followed closely by HK-47.

I groaned internally. "What are they doing in here?"

"Atton, they're part of the team too," Ember said, though I caught her glancing disparagingly at HK. I tried to hold back a snarky remark about rust, rainwater, and droid-parts.

And, naturally, HK had something to say.

"Statement: We are perfectly allowed to join in your meatbag discussion, meatbag. You fleshy organisms do like to think that your organic wiring gives you the upper-hand when it comes to intelligent discussion, but I hardly see why."

"Just can it, you overactive toaster," I snapped. HK made a sound that sounded very much like a gasp.

"Offended Retort: _Toaster_? Really, meatbag. That pains me in the automatic firing processors, that does."

And with that, strangely enough, everyone settled down with a heavy silence. I remained by the door, away from HK, while Ember sat next to Bao-dur. She cleared her throat before beginning into her leader-like speech.

"I think it's obvious that we need to make some sort of plan. Or at least a short-term one, so we can get out of this mid-space monotony."

General agreement sounded throughout the cabin. I nodded.

"Where do we begin?" asked Visas thoughtfully. "My old Master is dead, as are the other Sith. Our purpose has changed, I think that is clear."

"What do you have in mind, Ember?" asked Mical. Naturally.

That was the question on everyone's mind, it seemed. I gazed at Ember expectantly, watching as her eyes flickered with deliberation.

"I'm not sure," she said quietly.

I perked up at that. Because, for some reason, I could tell it was a sort of lie. It was pure smuggler instinct, but that was a thing you didn't ignore.

"Nice," Mira said to her sarcastically.

"If you don't mind me adding," said Bao-dur from the floor, raising his hand like a school-child. "I think that we ought to stop somewhere for repairs."

"And what do you know about what needs to be repaired?" I asked with a smirk. He laughed softly.

"Enough to know that you probably don't have enough expertise for it."

"Point taken," I said.

"We also need supplies," added Mical. "I would like to stop by a true hospital, if only for your sake, Bao-dur."

And so, the discussion poured on and on, these planets considered and those planets considered. Dantooine was considered for a moment, but Ember didn't feel like "imposing on Khoonda". I lifted my brow at that, but said nothing, so the discussion continued.

Finally, a planet was decided upon, merely because Ember thought it was the closest. This seemed to make the most sense. As the others talked, I watched Ember's face, strangely unreadable, smoothly transition between each of her emotions, each held very keenly in check. This set off crazy flags in my head, all of these things she was doing going against the grain, against the persona of the woman I thought I knew. Of course, the very thought of me actually knowing her was almost laughable. I probably didn't know her.

I just liked to think I did, even if that wasn't in her best interest.

"We're off to Telos then. Surely, another adventure awaits," she said dryly.

_Off to another grand catastrophe_, a part of me mumbled.

But the other part of me was too concerned with the word 'we' to really care.

I sighed exasperatedly, as I always did. But a part of me caved in from relief. "We" had another purpose. "We" gave me time to think, time to consider just what I could do to try and escape this, if necessary. "We" gave me…

Well, it gave me time. And to me, time was everything.

"To Telos," I mumbled. Ember watched me with an amused half-smile, even though her eyes were even darker now than they were when she was lying safely in the med-bay.

Though it was unspoken, it was clear to everyone that the meeting was over – there was nothing left to say. Slowly, we filtered out of the room, clambering off to our usual destinations. The only two who didn't move were Visas and Bao-dur.

I started toward the cockpit. I was the flyboy, but now I was the flyboy with a job. I was distracted enough by the sequences playing in my mind that I hadn't noticed the Ember was following me.

"Are we ready to go?" she asked me softly as I entered the cockpit, beginning the sequences to prime the ship for travel. The cold metal of the navi computer hummed pleasantly beneath my fingers.

"Soon enough," I replied, going over the Priming Sequence in my head for another moment before I actually turned to face her. I watched her for a flash of a moment, wondering if she was going to say anything about her strange behavior, her lies, and this sudden drive that came from nowhere and powered her rise from the sleeping-dead.

Course, it wasn't the drive that scared me. Ember was like that – able to sit up one day and decide that she was going to save the entire settler population of Dantooine, for example. But it wasn't like her to sit up and look as though she had just witnessed the spiteful ghosts of a thousand people appear before her, as if they were out for her blood and her blood alone. I watched her for another moment, just because I could. Just so I would remember again how she looked when she was distracted.

Her eyes would relax. Her skin became smooth, like a dark crystal mirror.

She looked at me too. Eventually, she smiled amusedly.

"We should probably go then, Grand Master Pilot Rand."

I grinned at her, as per script. Slowly, ever so slowly, her eyes lit up again, even for just a moment.

"Yes, Mistress Jedi."

So I go. Because even if her eyes were the color of dull leather, there's a glow in them I simply could never, ever turn away from.

* * *

A/N: And that's the end of Chapter Two. Hope you liked it...reviews are, as always, appreciated. Thanks for stopping by! :)

Next Chapter: Ember's thoughts -- and why Ember and Co. happen to land on Telos once again. There is, as always, more in store, at least according to the Force...


	4. Three: This Tenuous Peace

A/N: Welcome to Chapter Three. Hold on, if you dare.

_Disclaimer: I, in no way, shape, or form, own anything of the KOTOR universe or even the Star Wars universe. If I did, this thing might actually make sense to me...heh._

* * *

_Burning._

_Fire._

_And the darkness of the void._

_All of which are pulling at her being, pulling at her waist and tugging her forward, even as she digs her feet into the ground. It drags from within, tearing from her those memories she clings to with all of her being. Jedi ways are forgotten. There is only holding on now, only grasping onto those things she does not want to lose._

_Screaming._

_Agony._

_Death._

_But there, within the agonizingly dark void, are the eyes of someone she knows all too well, someone she keeps stored deep within her memory. A girl screams, and it is a voice she feels that she should know. The memory escapes from her ever-tightening grasp like silken streams until she cannot think straight._

_Those eyes. Those dark eyes, full of secrets and desires, all too real to be a mere dream, calling to her like the deadliest, most beautiful beacon in the entire galaxy. The song that thrummed in her veins – the song that warned her away as it pulled her forward, the song that willed her toward _him_, toward the destiny she tried to escape so long ago._

Revan. Revan is calling to me_, she realizes with heartbreaking sorrow. _I do not want this. This isn't real, even as it burns my soul to cinders.

_And it is true._

_The only real thing she sees is soft feather grey, the color she had clung to as her world fell to pieces, the eyes she had sought out and chased in order to escape the darkness. When she awakens, that is all that she can see, and she is thankful._

* * *

Chapter Three– This Tenuous Peace

_Ember_

"Are you bored or somethin'?" he asked me without looking at me, as was his usual way. It was a tactic for him to always appear as uninterested as possible when talking to me, as if he didn't care a whit for what was actually going on. I just shrugged.

"Funny that you assume boredom whenever I enter the cockpit," I replied with a smile.

"Well, hey. The shoe fits," Atton said, finally turning to me with a dashing smirk, pazaak cards visible in his hand. The cockpit was like his cave – he hardly left if he didn't have to, from what I assumed to stem from a distaste for a few of our other passengers. At first anyway…we all kind of got along nowadays, if in a stiff kind of fashion sometimes. That happened when you survived with certain people through certain circumstances for so long.

"Wow. I never thought you had it in you to call yourself boring."

"Eh," he replied, though he didn't turn away yet.

"You're just proving my point, you know," I said, trying to hide a smile.

"I tend to tell the truth around you," he said. Even though he still sounded as bored as ever, his tone was quieter. Softer. Truthful.

There was a strange rush within my heart, like fire and ice all at once, a beautiful collection of chaos. I could say nothing more after that.

I stood behind his chair and leaned on it. He turned away and began messing with his cards again. This was comfortable for us. This was normal, as normal could be, so it was ok. I didn't feel like bothering him about his Jedi Training. He didn't look like he would care one way or another. I simply relished the silence and the warm comfort from standing in the same room as him, feeling that maybe he felt that way too.

There could be sanctuary here, even in the darkest of realms or times. There could be sanctuary, where I looked past the man hidden beneath the guise, the man who wasn't called Atton at all but rather something else. There could be peace even here, where I looked past that and somehow managed to understand, beneath the tangled mess.

I thought about my dream. I thought about his eyes and how they pulled me from the darkness that was...

Revan.

I winced and sucked in breath through my teeth, an instinctual form of protection against memories I didn't want. Atton snapped around to stare at me, concern evident in those crafty eyes of his for a flash of a moment. I just shook my head.

"It's been rough," I said softly. "But I'm recovering."

I expected him to smirk, say something that he thought was clever, and then laugh at himself and at me. That was how I knew him to respond to things that were dark. That was how he kept it away from himself.

He just nodded slowly instead.

"The next adventure will always come," he said. "Whatever that is."

_Atton is, as he always has been, the fool._

I watched him and thought of Kreia's last prophecies, her smooth but heavy words coming to me in a sudden jolt. With a great yawning emptiness, I remembered both my dream and her words, the two twined together like twin strings of a tapestry.

Everything wanted to pull me away from this tenuous peace, it seemed. Everything was shouting at me to leave, but my soul was screaming at me to stay. I didn't want to leave this.

It struck me again how ambiguous Kreia's words had been about Atton.

I wondered for his future, and oddly enough, I felt despair. I knew I would most likely not be involved in many more of his adventures, and this instilled a sadness that crawled and scraped holes on every one of my surfaces it could reach. The very thought made me empty inside.

I thought about that, and what the Masters would have said.

_Attachment creates folly_, they always said.

_No_, I thought. _Attachment creates holes that are never again able to be filled. And strangely enough, these are the only holes I cherish._

So maybe, in the end, it was folly after all.

* * *

We sat in silence for a long time. I listened to the sounds that created the normal atmosphere of the Ebon Hawk.

Humming, nearly-silent beeping, the soft voices of the others mixing and melting with each other. I listened as Mira and a recently Force healed Bao-dur discussed something about the hyperdrive, still on the down low. I heard Mical speaking to Visas, and she responding patiently in turn, as if directing him. It made a kind of harmony that lulled me into a kind of half-sleep, still leaning on the pilot's chair.

"We will never get to Telos at this rate," Atton rumbled close to my ear, sounding very loud to me even though he was probably speaking even quieter than usual.

"Stupid hyperdrive," I muttered in response, not caring to move my head from the top of the chair. The tips of my dark hair touched his shoulder; the side of his face was close enough to my own so that I could feel the heat coming from him. "Why can't it fix itself?"

"Whoever invents a self-repairing hyperdrive will be very rich, let me assure you."

I smiled at that. It felt nice to smile, for some reason.

And then, in the back of my mind, something ticked. In the same moment, Atton sat up a little bit. I focused for another moment, and alarm rose within me.

My eyes immediately strayed toward the cockpit window, and outside, the sight made me stand up full on in confusion.

Outside, a great, coalescing shadow slid amongst the stars, a lazy behemoth that curled in over itself and across the pricks of light until all I could see was darkness. The girl's scream sounded in my head again, even more vivid and alive with tainted fear. The dark eyes flashed before me again. But when I blinked, the image disappeared.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Atton said, but when I glanced at him, I knew that he had not seen the image that I had seen. The image was for me alone.

A warning, almost. A sign.

"Turn," I said abruptly.

"What?" he sputtered.

"Turn!" I practically shouted, the panic that had been slowly creeping up my spine now open and full within my chest. The urge to get away from the dark anathema I had seen pressed upon my mind so suddenly and so fiercely that I almost made a dive for the controls. I locked myself in position through sheer will, even as the warning twitched within my limbs.

I focused on the outside world. I would not let this strange panic wash over me. I would not let it control me. I was a Jedi. This could not control me.

Slowly, one by one, each of my muscles chinked out of place as I washed the calming tempo of the chant over and over within my mind, assuaging the places hardened by pure panic. I felt Atton's eyes on me every once in a while, but he said nothing. I wondered if he felt it too, and then again, figured he did not.

The warning was for me.

And then, when I thought I had found control, the ship began to fly out of control in turn.

In a moment, I was thrown against the wall, my side and shoulder screaming in protest. Throughout the cabin I heard shouts of surprise and pain as each of the crewmembers were thrown into whatever had been closest to them. Atton, somehow, had clung to the ship's controls, though creative oaths were flying out of his mouth at a speed and length I had never before witnessed.

"Ember, get down, hold on and _do not let go_," he managed to shout to me. I thought about clinging to the pilot's chair, but decided he needed the maneuvering space. I threw myself instead at the co-pilot's chair and clung for my life, cursing my lack of piloting skills.

"What the hell are you doing, Atton!" I heard Mira shout from the back. I sighed in small relief, glad she was at least conscious.

"Not me! 'S not me!" he replied at once, his words as piercing as the focus within his hardened eyes. The computers complained at us, the gauges and controls flickering back and forth, on and off.

"Try to turn out of it!" I yelled to him over the dangerous creaking and yawning of the _Hawk_'s metal.

"What do you think I'm doing over here?" he said. I turned toward Mira, whose flaming red hair was easy to spot even as the ship was rocked in every direction. My eyes watered, trying to gain the focus that would not come, trying to fight the strane pulling sensation within my gut...

"Mira! Where's everyone?"

"Ah, hell!" she shouted. She began to tumble and maneuver herself toward the back of the _Hawk_. T3's droid-screeches echoed throughout the cabin. I saw him helplessly roll by, followed right on cue by HK's clanking body.

"Panicked Response: Master! That drunken excuse for a meatbag is trying to kill us all! I would usually find that fascinating, but my outer hull is suffering extensive denting and I find no joy in that whatsoever!"

I desperately reached through the Force to try and reach the auras of my friends, to touch them and know that they had not somehow been killed by the rampaging ship. I sighed in immense relief when I felt them all, alive if not as well as I would have hoped.

"Just get down and hold something locked to the floor!" I shouted to anyone who could hear, which was probably a grand total of Mira, Atton, HK, and T3.

The great rumbling echoed within my chest and shook my entire body as I clung to the co-pilot's chair with aplomb. Again, I reached through the Force in an effort to stabilize the ship, if it was even possible. I wondered at the amount of strength it would take to stabilize such a severely unbalanced, large object, balking at the notion of how much I would have to give.

I looked to Atton, so intent, and I suddenly didn't care anymore for the total.

I focused – the Force came alive within me, the warmth becoming all I knew as the song of the living thrummed through me, overpowering the dying anthem of the rocking ship. My vision was coated with silver and blue as the image of the whole ship became clear to me. I wrapped myself around the image, trying to hold it in place, trying to find the dark point where the ship lost control and somehow heal it. I swept through the ship, tendrils of the Force reaching into every nook and cranny of the _Ebon Hawk_. I was sleek and cold as metal, whirring like the computers, blazing like the engines.

Only a part of me existed now, and that part listened to the sudden silence that had overcome the place.

"Ember…?" I heard Atton's low tenor.

"It stopped. How'd it stop?" I heard Mira ask.

But the true part of me listened only to the song of the Force, bathing in it, cherishing it more than my own life. I was the Force. The Force was me.

And then, the _otherness_ came again. The strange push and pull of another presence.

_Stop_, it boomed, and the voice shook me straight to the core so suddenly that I instantly curled in on myself, the blue and silver disappearing, the tendrils of power that had outstretched from me snapping back into place and contracting instantaneously into their former shapes, like a rubber band.

I let go. I felt myself fall.

* * *

Blackness was everywhere, but it did not suffocate me this time.

It was like a protective covering, like a blanket to protect me from the cold until I could make my own heat. It lasted for mere moments before I could again see and realize where I was. I sat on the floor, my legs splayed apart, my arms wrapped still around the co-pilot's seat. It took me another moment to feel soft, delicate hands against my shoulders, firmly grasping them, as if to give me life.

"She's fine," Visas said, her voice calm and soothing though not directed toward me. "I feel her life, the Force within her. She is as alive as you or I, Young Disciple."

"She's not injured?" asked Mical, as if I wasn't there. It irritated me slightly, as I was annoyed enough with this fainting business.

"She is recovering," Visas said cryptically before switching her attention to me. I let her Force gaze rake over me, allowing her to find what it was that she was so intently searching for. I knew Visas well enough – she would not do such a thing so willingly if she thought it would not help me or someone else.

She reached across our Force Bond, and within moments she knew exactly what had just occurred. I tried to keep the dream from her, as it was oddly twisted with the rest of my memories, but she caught glimpses of that too.

I would have to talk to her, and was partly relieved for it. I needed someone to tell this to, someone to absorb it with, and no one understood better than Visas.

"What happened?" I asked blearily, though I had a feeling my answer would be different than any I would receive.

"No one is quite sure," said Mical. "We assumed it to be maybe Nova residue, from a dying star not too far from here, considering the way the terminals were acting."

I thought of the voice that told me to stop in the midst of the Force, and a shiver shot up my spine. It was twisted, like the voices of all that I knew strung together into one, and it had scared me out of focus. I decided to switch questions. "How long was I out?"

"Not long. Maybe a minute tops," I heard Atton respond, his voice surprisingly closer than I expected. I looked up to see him leaning toward me from the pilot's chair. "Pretty crazy magic you have there."

I thought I heard awe in his voice. For me.

"It wasn't magic," condoned Mical, though there was a particular note of awe within his voice too. "It was the Force."

"What's the difference?"

Mical's child-like face twisted in annoyance. "Atton, you yourself are training to become a Jedi and –"

Atton waved him off. I saw a flash of petty annoyance cross his features -- just another bout between the two rivals, as usual, even after what had just happened. I shook my head.

_Unbelievable_.

"Cool it, pretty boy. I was trying to make a joke."

"A lame one," Mira added, even though I caught a glimpse of her smile.

"Hello, Mira," I said wryly, but I was busy counting in my head. Mira, Mical, Atton, Visas…

"Where's Bao-dur?" I asked suddenly.

"Right here." He poked into the cabin with a warm smile, larger than usual. "I got the hyperdrive working! Partially thanks to you, General. Your little light show did something for the energy converters so that they finally worked well enough for me fix the thing again."

I couldn't help but smile back. There was always such excitement and joy in his voice whenever he spoke of his beloved machines.

"Yes! Ha ha…Telos, here we come!" Atton cheered boyishly, spinning in his pilot's chair before accessing the codes for hyperspace. I laughed, suddenly in octaves of a better mood. With such a past as he possessed, it was a wonder that he could still obtain such great entertainment from such a thing. It gave me hope. It made me laugh more.

But it seemed no one could help it. We stood there, all of us laughing, none of us quite sure why, all the way into the infinite blue of hyperspace.

* * *

When we landed, as I stepped off of the smooth, grey loading ramp, I wasn't quite sure what I was expecting.

But it was to be said that Telos felt as boring to me as it did the very first time I had come. I almost _forgot_ why I came, the memories faulty and flawed, chipped away by endless time in deep space.

Of course, it all came rushing back when our greeting arrived –a military consort. The _Ebon Hawk_ had that uncanny skill of attracting attention at every place it landed. Every single place.

"Great," I heard Atton mumble behind me as he came out of the dark of the ship. "If we screwed over some sort of regulation or other, it wasn't my fault."

I just kept an eye out, watching as the rag-tag team in orange and black approached us. After only a moment, I caught that there was one not in the uniform of the TSF.

"Admiral Onasi," I greeted as I stepped off the ship, politely brushing down my worn, pale tunic. In another instant, Atton was beside me. I felt the others patiently make their way from the dark recesses of the _Hawk_.

"Friend of yours?" he asked me quietly, as to not attract attention. But there was a distinct tension in his voice – obviously, he was not trusting of most any of the personnel here on Citadel after the first incident with us being thrown into Force Cages and everything. It was also his nature to be paranoid.

I just nodded slowly, waiting as they approached. I bowed politely, in Jedi fashion.

"Ember Tythael," Onasi said contemplatively as he stood before me, as if considering how he felt about me being here at all. "I'm glad you've returned in one piece. It's incredible what you did out there."

I just nodded. I caught him taking glances toward the ship and I couldn't help but frown. I could tell there were memories for him on this ship, and that each time he saw it that something nagged at him, as if he had done something wrong by losing Revan.

I shook the image of Revan out of my head again. I didn't need that.

"Yes, we're all ok. I've returned upon your order," I said, partially as a reminder.

He nodded slowly, again looking uncomfortable. "Yes. I have someone who…decided they needed to see you. As I thought they would."

I watched the man. There was a great bit of…intuition within him. I detected the slightest hints of Force Sensitivity, though I wondered if that had anything to do with his connection with Revan. He tended to…rub off on people.

Too well, as it seemed. Like me, only…real. Not contrived by the Force.

"Well, then. Lead the way, I guess. We'll be following you."

The Admiral nodded at that, and turned to lead us all away. I never found him to be a man of words anyway.

* * *

And again, we were on Telos.

I decided to let it sink in.

After we met on the docks, the Admiral had told me that the contact suddenly had an urgent matter they needed to attend to before meeting up with me. Since he figured we would be around for a good bit, resting and all of that, he had set us up some quarters in an old apartment not that far from the one we had been in for house arrest. The only difference was that these new ones were bigger and more put-together.

Having a place to relax and unwind (because honestly, it was hard to do in deep space), most of us went our separate ways. Atton, Mira, and (oddly enough) Mical were off to the nearby Cantina. I figured Atton had tricked Mical into it for a laugh, but there wasn't exactly anything I could do about it. Visas was meditating to calm and realign herself, Bao-dur was sleeping, and the droids were still on the ship.

So, I decided the best way to let it sink in was to take a walk along the simple, metal stretches of the Citadel Station.

I couldn't meditate. I didn't want to clear my mind, think of nothingness – I wanted to think, to figure things out. And I felt that walking would help ease tension and be more interesting than trying to force myself to meditate. Visas said nothing to me about it, despite her willingness and desire to speak with me.

There wasn't much to be said, though.

I knew I would have to talk at some point but I wasn't ready. I had to figure it out within myself first if I wanted to have any luck with words whatsoever. There was too much to muddle through -- so much that I didn't know.

A constant in my life, I decided. All this angst and sadness that came along with it – that too seemed to be a constant, and it was one that never faded even as I tried to scrape away and claw myself out.

That was why I enjoyed the peace and quiet of the _Ebon Hawk_. I could at least escape there, feel like _me_, Ember, and not some harangued, lost Jedi woman.

With some deal of reluctance I thought upon the dream, unsure as to what it meant. A vision?

A sick feeling arose in my stomach. I hoped, desperately, that it wasn't a vision. All the screaming and the darkness mixed with endless fire. It was more like a surreal nightmare than any vision of reality. But then I thought upon Revan's eyes and I had a feeling that it was more than a strange, delusional dream.

They were too vivid. Too real. Just as I remembered them before I had tried to hide them deep within the recesses of my memory so long ago, because I did not want to think upon them again. I thought of the voice that told me to 'stop' and I realized they sounded very much like Revan's voice – _voices_ – younger, older, and in-between.

Something within that dark cloud had interrupted my focus, as if it didn't want me to connect with the Force. As if it was searching for me, and that by using the Force, I was resisting it.

With a great weight of fear did I think upon the possibility that it was Revan. I didn't want to see him so soon. I had no idea what he had become, what he was like now. I felt as though there were so many other, better things for me to be trying to do, despite all that Kreia had said at the end.

Kreia.

She may have been a Sith in the end, but in that same end, she loved me too.

Was she lying? How would I know?

And the girl…the screaming girl. It was a voice that I could not remember ever hearing before, and yet it was a voice oddly familiar to me. One that my spirit reached out for, that I felt I cared for, in some way.

I was being pulled in all directions. Everything was pulling on me.

I kept walking, kicking the spotless floor. This walk really wasn't helping as much as I thought it would. All it did was bring forth more questions, all yet to be answered. In frustration, a deep frustration that made my blood burn, I stood still.

_Jedi should not be frustrated_, I urged myself halfheartedly. _But I guess I'm not meant to be the perfect Jedi, am I?_

I thought of the Masters, and I thought that maybe it was a very good thing that I was not.

Even so, the walk had been heartily unsuccessful. I almost turned around to head back to the apartment in order to meditate with Visas when a heavy, male voice made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. There was something wrong with it.

I stood and listened. There was another man, with equally an unsettling voice – all too condescending and sickeningly attentive in the wrong way.

I half-ran to look around the corner. In a shabby corner, two large, lightly armed men surrounded a young woman, who stood as if she was bored. She responded with a sharp, clean accent, world-weariness and even a little pride mixed in her words.

"You honestly don't know what you're doing, do you?"

The men just laughed, hearty and hateful. But they were stopped short by a simple wave of one of her dainty hands.

"Just leave me alone. And go rethink your lives while you're at it." She rolled her eyes, clearly not amused by the bullying men.

"We should leave you alone," voiced the men, their voices synchronized as one. "And rethink our lives while we're at it."

The Force signature sung within me, as unique and memorable as it was powerful. My face drained of blood – this was, obviously, another Jedi, but worse than that, it was one I knew. Her hair was a simple brown, pulled back into two small tails, and her eyes were a bright, silver blue.

I didn't fracking need this, as Atton would have put it.

As the men walked away, she locked her gaze with mine. A shadow passed over her eyes – confusion, ugly surprise, and an old, fading animosity were clear as she faced me, trying to process all that she was seeing.

"Ember Tythael?" the figure said, as if she didn't believe it. I couldn't quite believe it myself.

I blinked. I remembered her, but maybe not in the best of lights. The last I had seen her, I had to fight her in a dark vision on Korriban. Before that, she had condemned me for my ways.

"Bastila Shan?" I asked hesitantly.

A strange smile spread over her moonlight face and was frozen there.

"The very same."

* * *

A/N: And there's Chapter Three. I feel like I have no idea where I'm going half the time, so I'm sorry if this seems totally boring to you. I'm working on it thoug, honestly I am. :)

Huge thanks to reviewers out there! And tell your friends, because I want feedback and...well, help too. Reviews help me a lot, as well as ideas, so gimme some!

Till next time...

_Next Time_: It seems Bastila Shan is not the only personality Ember and Co. will have to deal with...


	5. Four: The Color of Healing

A/N: So why a silver lightsaber? Because Silver Lightsabers pwn everything else, that's why! :D As does the Love Theme from Episode II of the movies…ahh, good stuff that, and obvious inspiration for a part of this chapter (if a small part...). And beware Atton's double personalities...! Haha, no not really, but there are many parts to this man, if you didn't already know. :P

Sorry if it seemed it took me a while to set this up...well, because it seemed that way to me. It has been written for a while, but my choking perfectionism when it comes to publishing chapters and Christmas time bringing new and lovely video games for my enjoyment (Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility anyone?) has delayed it somewhat. But at any rate, enjoy the next chapter, told once again in the somewhat angsty perspective of Atton Rand! *cheers sound*

Happy Holidays everyone! :D

_Disclaimer: I own nothing of the sort when it comes to the KOTOR universe, except the few characters I invented for my own purposes. Oh, and I own mistakes. That's about it. :D_

* * *

_Atton likes to think he is an observant man. _

_So, when he observes that the Lady Jedi, Miss Ember Tythael, is not in the possession of any sort of lightsaber (as far as he knows, at any rate), he feels it is his place to ask. For his past, dark experiences with Jedi tell him enough to know that Jedi are considered married to their lightsabers, and that a Jedi without a lightsaber is almost unheard of._

_But he does not want to linger in that place too much, for he has tried too hard to escape it already. _

_He turns to her and asks,_

_"So, what happened?"_

_Ember stares at him silently for a very long time with her strange, perceptive eyes, and he begins to wonder about her mental capacity._

_"You know…your 'saber?"_

_She turns away, nodding to herself, though he does not know why. She is still silent for a long time, and he begins to wonder if he has hurt her in some way. He does not want to linger there either. He does not like the thought._

_"It was purple, I think. Unique," she says quietly, finally. "But it isn't mine anymore."_

_So when, a week or two later on Dantooine, she rebuilds the lightsaber she was, in all ways, meant to have, he can't help but observe something else._

_This lightsaber is a stream of silver light, like a soft beam from a white moon. This is not the blazing purple lightsaber he imagined, the color that borders upon red and blue, unable to decide which side to land upon until it is all mixed into one…_

_"Why silver?" he asks her. "I thought yours was purple."_

_She looks up to him with a small, knowing smile on her face, a smile that makes his heart do strange flips because it looks almost happy for once. She looks…brighter._

_"I've changed," she says._

_And he nods. Silver, he thinks, fits her much better anyway._

* * *

Chapter Four – The Color of Healing

_Atton_

"There is something to be said for the magic of a cantina," I sighed, an amazingly clean glass of Juma in my right hand. Mira made a sound of assent as she downed some of her drink.

"Finally a place to relax," she agreed. I had a little more respect for her today, since I didn't know a whole lot of women who would have chosen to come along with me (_me_, thank you very much) to the Cantina as a drinking buddy. Not anymore, anyway. Ember and Visas didn't strike me as the types.

And, well, Mira grew up in Nar Shaddaa, where sometimes the only entertainment you can have is the ability to get yourself crazy drunk.

I glanced to the right of me, where Mical sat, looking a bit uncomfortable while trying to hide it. I grinned at him.

"You want anything?" I asked, feigning politeness since I really didn't care one way or another. Now that I thought about it, bringing along Mical wasn't nearly as funny as I thought it would be.

Though, from the strangled look he gave me, it certainly had its moments.

"That would be a no, considering the fact you dragged me here," he replied quietly.

"Ember wasn't going to be around. Not like you had anything else to do, huh?" said Mira, much to my surprise. A playful smile was plastered upon her round face and spread across her dark lips.

Mical's cheeks bloomed into color.

"I was going to meditate with Visas, actually…"

"Of course you were," I said, still grinning. He turned to me with an unreadable spark in his eye.

"At least I don't go to get slobbering drunk when she's not around, eh?"

Mira burst into laughter. "He got you there, Rand." She turned to the blonde, an appreciative look on her face. "I didn't know you had it in you!"

I rolled my eyes as Mical smiled and chuckled like the golden boy he was.

_Great. I take Mical along to get the opportunity to laugh at _him_, but it ends up that everyone is laughing at _me_. Just great…_

But my inner ruminations and pity party were quickly interrupted by the sound of crashing metal and a terrified, glass-cutting scream. Commotion erupted around us; drinks were spilled over tables at the sudden sound, pooling on tables and floors in noxious puddles. _Only on Telos_, I thought with slight dismay, _would people in a Cantina scatter at the sound of a simple scream. There was always worse at Nar Shaddaa and people never even turned their heads…_

A part of me (the scoundrel part of me) automatically shied away from it all, locking me into place, sitting at the bar. I didn't want to mess. I didn't want to get involved and, in the process, get myself in even bigger trouble.

But that plan was shot to hell. Mira and Mical were already up and running out of the room. I followed silently, brandishing my blaster as they pulled forth their weapons, cursing my luck. I did, after all, happen to be following after a bounty hunter with a conscience and a peculiar half-Jedi with a penchant for stating the obvious…

Mical was even foolhardy enough to pull out his fracking new lightsaber in the middle of the dark Cantina, to which I hissed,

"Are you _trying_ to attract attention?" He shot me a look as I continued. "I don't know about you, but a thousand people staring at you for any reason at all, even awe, is a little disquieting."

"We are training to become protectors of the innocent. Or do you forget?" he added with a genuinely warm, slightly condescending smile that I was pretty sure I didn't deserve in any way. I just shook my head and continued to follow, 'forgetting' to admit that I had 'forgotten' my own lightsaber on the ship. It didn't feel right to me when I held it. I didn't think it ever would, so I gave up on it pretty fast.

Finally, in the stark light of the Citadel walkways, did we see a slight crowd forming. People were yelling and gasping in horror while running like crazed gizkas, Ithorians were gurgling in what I could only assume to be alarm, and a girl was lying unconscious upon the ground, lying in a spreading pool of dark crimson…her own blood.

Mical, the resident doctor on our quaint _Hawk_, was already pushing himself to the middle of it. It was only then did I realize that standing over the girl was a man with a bloodied vibroknife. _No wonder everyone was running..._

In the next instant, without even thinking about it, I lifted my blaster and shot him directly in the chest. I cheered a little inside – it was, by all accounts, a fantastic shot.

He maybe blinked and was pushed back a little, but there was no sudden death like I expected. A deadly grin spread over his dark, catlike features, and my internal cheer squad was instantly silenced. My face fell.

_Damn. Body armor_.

Behind me, I heard sound of two – count em', two – lightsabers igniting. I whipped around to see Ember and another, almost as beautiful woman standing in battle ready positions, silver extending from Ember's hand and a golden yellow spreading from that of the other's woman's. _Like the sun and the stars…_

I stepped out of the way as they came dancing forth, as light and airy as the wind itself. While the other Jedi had a distinct elegance to her strikes, Ember swung with a decided directness that had a grace all its own. I had seen it many, many times, but I couldn't figure a day when it would cease to amaze me.

The man had no chance, even after a quick tussle with his vibroknife. He stumbled backward, held at bay by the two sabers, one at his back and one beneath his chin.

"In the name of the Republic, you are under arrest," said the Jedi woman, the one in front of the man. Suddenly, the people around us burst into cheers.

There were many in the galaxy that held resentment toward the Jedi. But after Ember's daring rescue of the Citadel Station and her swath of adventures that undeniably changed entire worlds, most peoples' attitude (at least here) seemed to change for the better. These people watched the two Jedi women with a distinct kind of admiration, each of them glowing with a universal 'thank you'.

Mical stood not too far. If he was anything like me, he was probably watching with wide, sparkling eyes. But then, Mical was Mical, and even if I didn't think too highly of him most of the time, he knew where his job was. Instantly, he was next to the fallen girl.

"What happened?" the unknown Jedi asked with an accent that was sharp but soothing all at the same time. She looked instantly toward me, the one brandishing the blaster.

_Things just don't want to work out for me, do they?_

"We were in the Cantina," volunteered Mira, who had helpfully chosen that moment to appear beside me. "We heard a scream and some commotion, and came out here. She was lying on the ground when we came out."

The Jedi woman just nodded. There was strangeness in her eyes when she looked at us, as if deeply surprised, dismayed, and moved by something all at the same time. But her attention quickly shifted to the man, who for some reason or another could not move. The Force, I figured. He obviously didn't know how to protect himself, that much was clear.

"She's alive," Mical added. Ember looked too distracted to say much of anything – her hands were upon the girl's midsection and were starting to glow a distinct blue color, awash in the color of healing.

_She didn't even take the other man's life_, I realized. But of course. Ember, despite her many years as an exile, couldn't bring herself to kill people unless she absolutely had to. _Malachor did this to her_, I had decided long ago. _The first time at Malachor, where she learned the consequences of killing._

"Sleep," the Jedi woman demanded. I could feel the power laced within her words, and instantly, the man was out. It was then that I noticed Ember's hands returning to their normal color. She looked up and sighed in relief.

"She'll be ok. She's unconscious, but that's to be expected, I think."

I couldn't help but notice Mical gawking at her. My blood boiled until Ember turned to face me. From the funny light in her eye, I figured she noticed it too.

"Atton, I could lend a hand picking her up."

I shrugged, knowing full well she could have done it on her own but eager to one-up Mical. I stepped to the girl's side, careful to avoid the spilled blood, and lifted her into my arms. She was particularly small and light – her feathery pale skin reflected that, contrasting with her full, dark hair that was partly matted with drying blood.

"What should we do with him, Bastila?" Ember asked the other Jedi woman, handily supplying me with a name for the nameless.

As the Telosians were dissipating, the TSF soldiers were finally managing to come around the corner, conveniently (and, well, inconveniently, since they were so late) and at once in the service of this Bastila. She turned to them with a sharp nod.

"Take him into custody. He shall be questioned at a later time."

However, her attention was not quick to hold. It was once again held by me – or in this case, the girl in my arms. She watched the girl for a few moments with an unreadable expression before her eyes widened considerably. She began to stare at the girl with a brightness in her eyes that I found disturbing…and only after a moment did I realize that it was hope that was beaming so distinctly from those silver-blue eyes of hers. For some reason, the Jedi woman was staring at the injured, unconscious girl with _hope_.

_I do not understand Jedi. I will never understand Jedi, even if I'm to become one of them,_ I decided. An outreaching darkness spread through me for a moment at that thought, my unease with the whole thing making itself apparent as Ember, in the same moment, finally turned away from me. I hadn't noticed that she was staring too.

"Ember, I must go and speak with Carth – err, Admiral Onasi. I will send you a message when we are ready to speak. Is that alright?" Bastila asked.

Ember was startled for a moment before nodding calmly. "Yes, of course Bastila. Take your time."

"Take the girl with you," Bastila insisted. I fought back a great, heavy sigh. Not only did she like to give orders, but she liked to give _ridiculous _orders.

Still, I figured I should just get used to it. There were always people getting added to our little rag-tag team, and since Mandalore and that fat, globe-like excuse for a droid were both off the ship, I figured we would have room somewhere for her, if it came to that…

Ember cast me another little smile, understanding. Then she turned to Mical and then to Mira.

"Alright. I guess we're going then," she said, mostly to us than to anyone else. None of us said anything. We just followed, like any good Padawan students would most likely do, but I couldn't help but frown.

_So much for a relaxing time at the Cantina_, I lamented.

* * *

It did not take long for us to reach our apartments. It also did not take long for us to realize there was a certain and distinct amount of commotion coming from the main room as well. I sighed, not feeling as though it was a huge threat to our livelihoods…

"When it rains, it pours," Mira said, noticing it as well. Mical nodded thoughtfully.

"And thunders and floods and even kills, at this rate," I couldn't help but add, somewhat bitterly.

Ember, if anything, looked faintly surprised but nothing more. She simply walked forward and pressed the button that would make the door come open, even sighing a little herself. Instantly, the door split in two horizontally, our view into the main room clear.

Visas stood rigidly before the door, her bright red robes contrasting sharply with the woman who stood across from her – a woman dressed in all white, with a shock of white hair and piercing blue eyes set into equally pale skin. A woman we had met here, on Telos, not so long ago, even if it felt like ages.

It was one of the Handmaidens. The young, "odd-looking" one.

Bao-dur was still asleep on the bed, though I wondered if he was actually asleep or just very intently faking it, considering the commotion the two women were making – a commotion that ended abruptly before Ember walked in.

"Ember," Visas said at once, her voice the pinnacle of calm, as it usually was, though with a slight edge of annoyance. "There is someone here for you."

She sounded pretty indignant as she stated the obvious, at least for Visas (which meant she was just slightly over the edge of tranquil), and the Echani woman didn't look like she was in any better of a mood.

"Curious," she said after another moment. "She thinks she knows what transpired."

"She hasn't any right to know what I was doing here," harshly replied the Handmaiden, looking with an affronted expression upon the other woman. From what I could tell, it looked like Visas was able to figure what was going on with her Force Sense, but only at that very moment. As if she needed a distraction or other.

Visas said nothing to that. She looked a little preoccupied all of a sudden. Without eye-to-eye cues, it had taken me some time to figure out how just how to tell if she was angry or disappointed or even if there was a difference in her emotional spectrum. I still wasn't that good. The only reason I could tell was by the way her shoulders stiffened.

The Handmaiden had also silenced herself upon seeing just who was in my arms.

"Who is this?" Visas asked, her voice hushed and kind as she took a few steps toward the girl. I was struck by the gentleness in her voice, not once expecting such a thing from her.

"We don't know," Ember said as Mira nonchalantly flopped onto one of the beds, as if even someone breaking into our room didn't faze her. I noticed that Mical had not drifted from the door, and was watching the Echani woman curiously.

"We saved her life, though. I think," Ember continued.

"There's not much of a grey area for that, Ember," Mira commented from the bed. "You're either dead or not."

I shot Mira a look.

"Yeah, there is."

And that was all I had to say about that. She snorted and turned her head away from us.

"What are you doing here, Handmaiden of Atris?" Ember asked diplomatically. The white-clothed woman turned to her with a strident expression.

"I was sent by Master Atris," she said proudly, but her pride was quick to falter when she saw Ember's face turn downward. I never understood just what had gone between Atris and Ember to make Atris so hateful toward the other. Honestly, I couldn't imagine someone actually _hating_ Ember with that much power, considering how most other people responded to her.

But this _was _the galaxy, after all.

The Echani continued, slightly more stilted. "She feels she must…atone. And she has sent me in request that I do anything that I can to assist you."

"Are you _serious_?" I couldn't help but blurt. "Another person? _Reall_y?"

The Handmaiden shot me a bone-chilling look and I was instantly backtracking.

"Look, it's not like it's anything personal or anything. But we are kind of full up already, don't you think?"

I looked down at the girl in my arms as if to make a point.

Mical, blessings of all damned blessings, chose this moment to speak up with a grand smile. "Don't worry, Miss. He says that to everyone. He was far worse to me though, let me assure you."

He then turned to me with that gracious, handsome smile. I rolled my eyes, aggravated by his…_perfection_. I muttered something about blondes and their intelligence quota, not quite understanding why he was still so civil towards me. He should've just been rude to me, gotten it over with, but no. He had to choose that fracking _high road_.

What did Ember see in him anyway? I would never understand, even as it made me burn inside and my chest hollow out just thinking about it.

At any rate, I didn't think he heard me, which was perfectly fine by me since it wouldn't have mattered anyway.

Ember, however, sensed a disturbance, I'm sure.

"Atton, why don't you go to my room and put the girl down so you can both rest. And maybe keep an eye on her while you're at it?"

I shrugged. I couldn't care enough to make a fuss.

"Fine," I said. My arms were starting to protest a little anyway.

And, maybe it was just me, but there were at least three very powerful women in the room, all of them standing a little too rigidly for my tastes (with the exception of Mira). So, yeah. I kind of wanted out of there.

* * *

And so, I was relegated to babysitting duty.

I was sitting in a chair, trying to force myself to relax, which kind of went against the point of relaxing. The girl slept soundly upon the large bed in the room, looking particularly peaceful and even pretty her own way. Her face was very round, and her eyes were covered by her sloppily-cut, dark bangs. Her small mouth hung open slightly.

The essence of a child at rest. The epitome of innocence.

I was jealous, and then felt ridiculous because I was jealous. She did look awful comfortable there, though.

That is…she did, until she woke up.

A blank look of confusion crossed her face for a moment as she rose up, and I watched as she scanned the room, leaning on her arms. All was well, as far as I could see, until her eyes landed on me. They were a startlingly bright silver, so much like Ember's lightsaber, the color of the argent moon. They were the silver of falling rain.

That was when she froze. Her innocent face melted into a concoction of fear and flat out anger. In the next moment, a pillow was flying at my face.

"Hey!" I shouted, more out of surprise than anything. Even so, it was only a pillow and I was good at recovering – I had sprung for her just before she reached the door, effectively blocking her path as I held her back.

"What are you doing?" I growled.

She just kicked and fought. "Let me go!" she shouted frantically, edging on complete hysteria. "Just leave me alone!"

_Oh_, I realized sharply. _She must think I'm with that man who tried to hurt her_.

"Stop kicking me and I'll let you go!"

She did. I let her go. And she, being the little scoundrel she was, tried to run again.

So, by instinct, I grabbed her again, swinging her up into the air so she was slung over my shoulder, my arms able to hold her strong, small legs still. She violently attacked my back with a flurry of fists, a frustrated, frightened scream escaping her lips.

I rolled my eyes at her fighting spirit. I had fought much worse before, and automatically winced at the thought. "Would you just –"

Suddenly, I heard the door open behind me. In that same instant, the girl fell still.

"_Thank_ you," I said emphatically as I turned to see just who had entered the room. Naturally, it was Ember, staring at us both with a glint of amusement on her face.

"What are you _doing_?" she asked me, a laugh lurking behind her words.

"Uh," I said at first, kind of surprised by her appearing there. "It's a new game I invented. Put the girl on the shoulder." I grinned at her sheepishly. I knew there were a million things I could have added to that, but through amazing skill and a touch of luck, I kept them all to myself.

As the girl had finally calmed down, I set her on her feet. She was a shorter thing, reaching maybe just past the center of my chest. She was also staring at Ember with a daunted expression, her huge eyes sparkling with wonder as Ember's calming presence filled the room.

"Who are you?" the girl asked quietly, her voice quivering like old instrument strings. Her accent was heavy by no means, but there was a subtle differnce that made her voice sound almost like a soothing lullaby melody.

"I'm Ember," Ember (obviously) said in response, carefully approaching the young one, a warm fire behind her brown eyes. She gestured to me. "And this is my friend, Atton."

I nodded to the girl, even waved a little, but she hardly even cast me a glance. I grimaced at Ember, who just shook her head at me, hiding another smile.

"Are you feeling all right?" she continued.

The girl just stared at her for a few more moments and then looked down at herself. She carefully touched the areas where she probably remembered being spliced open, most notably her stomach. Ember registered that as well – a dark pain made itself obvious as a shadow crossed her face. I inwardly sighed at her intense empathy – it was bound to get her killed one of these days.

"I thought I was…I thought I was dead."

Ember shook her head and touched the girl's shoulder with an affection that surprised me still. How quickly she bonded to others, Force or no Force. And how quickly things bonded to her. The girl didn't look upon Ember with any that same fear or anger that she had glared at me with. It was utterly and completely absent.

"I healed you," Ember said softly.

The girl looked up, shocked. "You…how?"

Ember smiled upon her, and the girl stood a little taller. "Another time, maybe. What's your name, if you don't mind me asking?"

"I'm Namiri," the girl replied quietly, her song-like voice no longer quavering. "But you can call me Nami, if you want. Some people think Namiri is too royal for me."

Ember laughed a little at the girl's obvious awkwardness around us. "I see. And Namiri, do you mind telling me what was going on out there?"

Namiri shuffled a bit on her feet, twiddled her hands. "I was on a mission for my new friend, and then these men took me away. I tried to fight them and get away, but they…" she looked up at Ember with an unreadable expression. "Well, you saw what happened."

"So you're from around here?" Ember asked encouragingly.

In the back of my mind, I thought that if I was ever going to be interrogated, I wouldn't mind it so much if Ember was the one doing it. You know, besides the obvious…

"No," said Namiri, the quaver returning.

Ember shot me a look. I, also, was a bit confused by that.

"I don't know where the heck I am," the girl continued. "And I really, really don't want to be here anymore. I want to go back home. You understand that, don't you?" she half-pleaded, reaching out to touch Ember's arm in an attempt to further that connection between them, as if to make sure Ember really did understand.

Ember only frowned, a shallow and distant thing, like a noon-time shadow. Hardly even existent, but creating severe, dark lines across the land nonetheless.

"Of course," she said.

And I was struck by it.

I, the scoundrel Atton Rand, could not tell if it was a lie or the truth. It was such a twisted mix of both that I became lost in it.

* * *

By her mystical Jedi powers, Ember had managed to get the girl to relax and rest some more. Not in the least bit interested (and also pretty useless since the girl probably didn't like me anymore) I had left earlier and was stuck lounging outside the door, waiting to be addressed. Finally, she emerged.

"She's asleep," she announced to me, a certain weariness in her stature that made me think that she kind of wanted to join the girl. Even though it was glaring obvious only now, I had an idea that she had been feeling this way for a while.

I nodded as I stood up straight. "Find out where she came from?"

"Terrae."

I stared at her for a moment, wondering if I heard wrong. "Run that by me again?"

"I know. I haven't heard of any Terrae on any of the galactic charts. It's unknown." She shot me a meaningful look, and I frowned.

"Maybe it has another name? A known, Republic-used name?"

"Possibly," she said. "Or it's way far in the Outer Rim. Either way, I'm going to assume she's pretty far from home. She was pretty distraught, almost…frantic. Like she had to go back. Like something was absolutely depending on it."

"Like she had a mission," I thought out loud. Ember nodded, but said nothing, choosing to stand and think. Her eyes glazed over and she stared at the ground.

Speaking of missions…

"Hey, what about that Handmaiden woman? Any idea why she's here?" I asked. She turned to look at me thoughtfully.

"Well, she's here to atone."

"Uh, yeah, Ember…I kind of heard that part."

She sighed. "For her own reasons."

"Oh, ok. Great, that really helps," I said, words bathed in biting sarcasm. She didn't even flinch, to which I gave her credit. "Look, couldn't you just use your Jedi magic mind-reading and figure that out real nice and quick?"

She regarded me neutrally. "She was trained to resist Jedi techniques, remember?" She frowned slightly. "And I don't like to do it. It feels...wrong to be inside another person's head." Her face shifted into a semi-sharp look, noticing that I was grinning ironically at her. "I said sorry when I did that to you -- blame Kreia, if you want. I know you want to."

I grinned even more. "What are you talking about? That woman loved me."

"Oh, of course. What am I thinking," she said, a cheerful glint in her eye before she was back again to thinking upon the real topic. I wasn't sure if I was glad for that or not. "I think she's here more because _she_ feels like she needs to, and not because of Atris' will. Atris could have sent any of the Handmaidens, but why she chose this one, the young one?"

"Right," I said, not willing to let go of this interesting banter just yet. "I forget you Jedi don't believe in coincidences."

She laughed a bit at that. "Atris? Definitely not. Me? Sometimes."

"Why?" I asked, because her answer strangely intrigued and surprised me. Ember, in many ways, seemed to exist off contradictions.

She smiled at me in that strange distant way, like she was in so many different places at once. "Well, I don't know. When I think about it, it makes sense that the Force controls every aspect of the Universe. But some things seem so…_out there_ that you have to wonder if the Force ever loses the reigns to some other power sometimes. If it ever has to change its plans."

And then, she truly turned to face me with those glowing eyes of hers, the power behind them as fierce and striking as it was naive.

"On the day I met you," she said, "and on all the days after, I have wondered that. Every day."

Her voice was so soft that it cut me inside. It was a softness that made me want to hold her in my arms almost as much as it made me want to hide. Anything and everything that I could have said was cut off by the choking beauty of it, my desire for jokes and sarcasm completely and totally drained, leaving me cold.

But that, being my luck (either good or bad) was when the com-computer began to call. She turned and left to answer it, closing the door to the unrealistically small communications room behind her.

I was left staring after her as a hole grew inside of me. A hole only she could fill.

_Well, Rand,_ I thought, emotions so in a jumble they were completely unreadable. _Now you're more stuck than ever._

And after a moment, a startling, strange moment, I realized that it scared me more than it should. I wanted that, to be near her, to have fun and crack jokes around her, if that was all I was ever to be given even if I wanted something more. But I also didn't...for her sake.

_Because there will never be a day where I would deserve to be near her._

And that, I knew, was the only place that Kreia had ever been right.

* * *

A/N : You have reached the end of Chapter Four. Congrats! Here's a cookie and a review request. ;)

Next Time: It seems it takes few words to reveal the truth, even from mere strangers...


	6. Five: Access Never Denied

A/N: I'm actually kind of proud of this chapter. I find my writing style to be kind of...un-flow-ish (a completely scientific term, by the by) sometimes, and I think I'm starting to improve upon that. I hope. And also, I think I've finally realized the importance of avoiding plot holes. Eheheh...:/ Just please tell me of any wierdness or mistakes you find!

By the way, Carth may not be totally in character. I honestly don't know much about a Carth around a male Revan, and Carth post-Revan. And Bastila seems a little…out of it, but some of that is on purpose, so yeah. But there are parts where I'm like...meh. Hopefully, it isn't too jarring, but please tell me if you feel otherwise! Anything else you don't like? Tell me in a much appreciated review! :D (I love emoticons, by the way. Could you tell? ;))

Happy New Year all!

_Disclaimer: I do not own anything below. No characters, not the world, nothing...except for my OCs of course. And credit must go where credit is due...I have to admit that SynysterShadow's idea of Bastila's bond being of some use slightly inspired the fact that it was even mentioned in this fanfic. Not trying to copy you, Syn! Your story rocks! :D_

* * *

_"Ember Tythael?" asks the com-computer in a distinctly male voice. It is Carth Onasi._

_"That's me," answers the woman in front of it. Though, really, Ember does not care what this man has to say. This planet has already revealed too much._

_"Good. You need to report to my office immediately." He declares it with the authority he is used to wielding, to which she does not care for either. Everything is becoming so twisted that she can barely hear him anyway. There is too much to think upon, all across an emotional spectrum stretched to its limits. She needs to sleep, but is afraid of the dreams. _

_"Is that alright?" he then asks, completely stripping himself of that same authority by those few words. She just nods until she realizes that one cannot hear nodding over the com-computer, and one really cannot see very well over one either. At least, not in this low-grade one on Telos._

_"Yes. It's fine, Admiral."_

_He nods. He makes the same mistake she did, and then realizes it. He speaks. "Outstanding. I'll see you shortly."_

_She switches it off after saying polite good-byes. And then she turns around and leaves the dark cave of a communications room. It is too small, as if it is made for secrets. Like lovers sending secret notes in the dark._

_She sighs at that._

_She faces the quiet main room, where everyone is lounging with comfort in each other's presence. This is her strange family, and one that she realizes she should never take for granted. She watches as Visas sits calmly on a sofa next to an awakened Bao-dur. She observes how Mical and Mira are discussing things together, like old friends after a class. She sees the Handmaiden watching them as well, and then how Mira and Mical both welcome her, openly, into the conversation._

_And then, Ember sees _him_ watching her. She blinks at this._

_All at once, everything is twisting into something bizarre. Bastila is not the same, though she never expected to see that woman again. There is something undeniably outlandish about Namiri, the girl from the unknown. And Atton was actually being subtle, which was the strangest of all. She looks at him and she sees how he tries to turn away from her._

_She can't help but smile. He doesn't do a very good job of hiding. He glances at her once…twice…_

_Then he just sits down and pulls out his Pazaak deck, very pointedly staring at it. She smiles at that too. Despite it all, she cannot help but smile at this man, this scoundrel she has grown to love._

_She thinks about that for a moment. She thinks about the strange happiness that brings her, despite love being against all that she had been taught for so long. But after many years of absence, new teachings arise. And she cannot help but feel that somehow the Jedi Code is absolutely flawed._

_She looks at the man sitting with his Pazaak deck in the corner, and yes, she knows that he is flawed too. Maybe even irrevocably so._

_But he is a man._

_And there had to be something flawed in a system that tries to take that away._

* * *

Chapter 5 –Access Never Denied

_Ember_

"Ember Tythael," greeted Carth.

I wondered if he knew how to greet me any other way. I wasn't quite sure myself.

I walked into the stark, large room, entirely metallic with a horizontal stripe of orange across the wall. A couple of uncomfortable looking chairs were scattered, mostly in the center, with a strange rug haphazardly set underneath a metal table, as if to give a feeling of home. But this was as close to someone's home as a boulder on Dantooine.

"Hello," I said. _I_ thought I sounded cheerful, at any rate. I was trying to at least look awake. To be polite.

In one of the uncomfortable chairs sat Bastila, staring out the wall-glass window with a distant expression. As she had not acknowledged my presence yet, I chose not to greet her either. I didn't want or need things to get any more awkward than they already were.

"You can take a seat if you want," offered Carth, and I silently obliged, continuing my theme of politeness. I sat in a chair across from that of Bastila's, trying my best to ignore her as much as she was ignoring me and Carth. Carth settled for leaning on the metal sofa next to Bastila, facing me with a sheepish expression.

"Well, I hate to start things off on a weird note," he said with a sigh. "But have you seen a blue Twi-lek girl running around here? Or a boy who looks kind of like me?"

In the corner of my eye, I saw Bastila shift and crack a smile.

"Mission is hardly a girl anymore, Carth. She's almost 20 nowadays. And Dustil is most definitely not a child either."

Carth shrugged good-naturedly. "Well, I'm getting to be an old man, everyone is young to me. Especially Mission and Dustil."

I had absolutely no idea who they were talking about, but I didn't mind that at all. It was interesting to listen to, at least. Despite that, Bastila turned to me.

"I'm not sure of what importance it would be to you," she said, more politely than I expected. "But Dustil is quite strong in the Force. I'm…teaching him, in a way."

I nodded. It was good that she had found another Force Sensitive, if a bit surprising considering all of the circumstances.

"And Mission is, as usual, just along for the ride," commented Carth. "She's helping with the restoration project here on Telos. She knows what it's like to have her home destroyed, so she wants to prevent Telos from dying."

I inwardly smiled at that. According to Kreia, her efforts would not be in vain.

"If you don't mind me asking," I said to them both, somewhat shamefacedly. "Just who are these people? Just to clarify."

Carth uttered a small laugh. Bastila turned away, all of a sudden distracted.

"Well, it does kind of tie into what we're supposed to be talking about," he said as he finally chose to settle into the couch. He sighed as he sat down. I watched curiously as Bastila subtly tried to distance herself from the conversation, wondering if she even realized she was doing it. Her eyes were glazed over as if remembering something.

"Dustil is my son. He was born here, on Telos. I thought he had been killed by the Sith many years ago during the Jedi Civil War, along with my wife. But…well, Revan and I found him in a Sith academy on Korriban."

_Oh_, I thought, shocked. _So it all comes back around, doesn't it?_

I thought of Korriban with a chilling disdain, the memories of the visions I had seen there all too vivid, even now. And I also remembered that academy. I remembered Sion, scarred and shredded, appearing from the shadows of it.

"You both travelled with him, right?" I asked, as calmly and unattached as I could manage. "I remember it being mentioned at one point in my travels. Great heroes of the Republic, am I right?"

"Yeah," Carth said, a little bashfully. "Mission and her Wookiee friend, Zaalbar were also a part of that. There were others too, but we've seemed to lost track of most of them." He turned to Bastila. "Do you know anything?"

She finally retuned herself to th e conversation, if a bit unwillingly. "Juhani sent me a message saying that she was coming out of hiding and heading to Dantooine. But I've not heard from Jolee or anyone else, for that matter."

She looked as though she wanted to simply turn away again, but thought better of it. She twisted around to face Carth full-on.

"But this talk of old allies doesn't help us very much, Carth. We ought to be getting to the task at hand."

I listened to her words and sensed a great weariness behind them, the long claws of reinforced-apathy clear the more she spoke. There was either something she was trying to forget or something she was very much trying to hold onto, I decided. Only a person like that would be stepping so lightly around things like she did. And for that matter, I never remembered Bastila to be one to 'step lightly' over much anything.

Not, of course, that I knew her well at all. Anything between us had mostly been hidden contempt, back at the Academy where I had made my choice to leave and she had made her choice to stay.

"Right," Carth grumbled as he shifted in his seat. "Now, because this is technically an official meeting, I'm going to have to ask some official questions," he said. "I think we all know why we're really here."

I smiled slightly.

"So, Ember," he continued. "On the official Republic record, why are you here?"

I thought about it for a moment. "Well, you asked me to return if it was at all possible."

"That's very nice of you," he said with an amused, albeit handsome grin. "But I have a feeling that isn't the only reason you've come. People don't just come to Telos anymore, especially Jedi." He cast a glance at Bastila. "Except for a select few."

This man, I noticed again, was extremely astute. And if his son was Force Sensitive, I had a feeling he would be as well, if only slightly.

"It's an off the record answer, I guess," he added. "I'm not the type for an interrogation."

My eyes drifted toward the window, into the bustling hub that was Citadel Station. It was dark, as was all space, and the buildings were a harsh metal with that same orange stripe. But there was something lurking underneath it all…

Or, as it was, within it.

"I had a feeling I had to come here," I said quietly, unwilling to reveal anything about my telling dream but wishing to be of assistance if I could. I felt like I needed to make it up to someone – I felt like had to unfairly maneuver my teammates in order to come, even if I was technically the leader and no one seemed to mind.

I thought of Namiri and wondered if maybe she was the reason behind all of this. There was a spark within the girl that I could not seem to read.

"That seems to be a recurring theme with you Jedi-types," he said, not unkindly. "Don't worry, I'm used to it."

He seemed to be trying to get Bastila involved somehow, but she was not responding in the least. I smiled a little at their comradery.

"Well, anyway…" He cleared his throat. "To continue. Do you mind explaining to me what happened with this girl Bastila was telling me about?"

At this, Bastila perked up a tiny bit. Her eyes cleared and flashed towards us, as if she was finally listening. I continued to be amazed at her strange quietness and I wondered at the tense energy rolling off of her in vibrating tendrils. I did not know Bastila well, but I did know enough of her to know that something had definitely changed within the last years. Something changed her so much that it touched the deepest roots of her very being.

There were very few things in this universe that could do that. All of them drastic, some of them awful, others becoming so. Only one had the opportunity for hope, but it was the one I was pretty sure she was sworn against. Jedi Code and all of that.

I turned toward Carth to avoid Bastila's eyes.

"Her name is Namiri," I said. I was, however, surprisingly unwilling to tell more than that. A strange protective impulse struck me, and I didn't override it. I didn't like the scouring look Bastila was giving me.

"She's from a planet called Terrae," I added, however. Carth's eyebrows furrowed– it must have registered with him that Terrae wasn't in any known galactic charts.

"What happened to her?"

I was shocked a little when Bastila spoke, but even more so because of the question. I turned to her slowly, trying to keep my face neutral. She seemed so disheveled, sitting there…so out of order, fallen from the grace that battle had brought her.

"You were there," I reminded her. "What do you mean?"

"Why is she here?" Bastila pressed, rising in her chair. I saw a flash of…was it anger in her eyes? Impatience?

"Why does it matter?" I returned, quicker than thought. Instantly, I tried to soften my face into an apologetic expression, but I found that I agreed with my words more than I expected.

But Bastila continued to surprise me. She stiffened in her chair, staring sharp, probing needles in my direction. I instinctively recoiled as her silver-blue eyes pierced my own.

"Because I _need to know_!" she hissed at me, sharp as a snake, eyes wild.

Carth was flailing internally, suddenly tensing where he stood. I was frozen in my chair.

But eventually she sighed, sounding like a dying breeze as she put her face into her hands. I slowly stood and approached. She began to recite the Jedi Code under her breath. _There is no emotion, there is peace…_

"By the Force," she said after a moment. Her voice was strong again, though she did not turn to face me. "I do not usually act this way."

I nodded. I believed that, for her sake.

"I'm sorry," she said, facing me this time. I just shook my head, still shaken by this new Bastila, this modest, injured Bastila with empty longing in her eyes.

"No, don't be," I said. I hoped it sounded soothing and not as penetratingly awkward as I thought it was. "It's been a strange time for us all, I think."

Bastila just nodded, a strange, wry glint in her eye as she slowly rose to her feet. She faced Carth for a moment before turning to me and then, toward the ground.

"It's been…five years, but I know it as well as I did the day I first met him."

I blinked curiously at her. But then a feeling crawled up my throat and all of a sudden, my curiosity died. I didn't want to know what she was going to say. I had a feeling I already knew.

Carth, on the other hand, looked as though a light was suddenly shining on his face. He must have known too. Bastila turned up to face me.

"I felt the presence of Revan on that girl."

"Namiri," I instantly, mindlessly corrected. Most of my mind was too absorbed with…well, absorbing what she had just said. _There is no way_, a part of me was shouting. _I would know! I knew him better than you ever did!_

But then I remembered that I had tried to forget all about him. That I was purposefully and carefully avoiding my memories of him.

Bastila, as it was, was too immersed in this information to notice my discomfort. She continued on as if we were hanging on her every word. Carth was certainly interested. And maybe, a small part of me was too.

"Namiri, then. She must be a sign. There must be a reason she was brought here…maybe Revan sent her!"

Again, the protectiveness rose within me like the spirit of a lioness. I subtly crossed my arms and stared her down until she really faced me. We were about the same height, both of us having been the shorter of the apprentices back at Dantooine. But I was slightly taller.

"She was taken away by bandits," I said coolly. "She doesn't want to be here."

I then remembered Namiri speaking of a 'friend' she was doing an errand or something for. Could that mean Revan? Was Revan somehow her 'friend'?

"Did she say anything else to you?" asked Bastila, surely sensing that I had more thoughts on the matter. I became slightly irritated at that.

"She needs to get back home. That's pretty much the only thing she is concerned with at this point, and I don't really blame her," I said. Bastila then began to pace, as if she could hardly control her excitement. This, I had to note, was not very Jedi-like behavior. From what I knew about Bastila, the Princess of the Jedi back on Dantooine, this was just a bit against the grain.

Carth just lifted his eyebrow, sharing my sentiments.

"Ok, so one girl happens to _maybe_ meet Revan. What do we do with that?" he asked the general room.

Bastila continued to pace. "But Namiri appearing at the same time as Ember? It is almost as if things are beginning to fall into place..."

I shifted uncomfortably at that. Yes, I seemed to be Fate's little puppet these days, but the fact that Bastila was outwardly declaring such made me feel almost a little panicky. Was I not meant to escape it, this strange destiny Kreia outlined for me? Or was I just being trite? I tended to accept some parts of her fortune-telling and reject others...but I had a feeling that that wasn't really allowed. If I was to believe one part, I would have to believe it all, wouldn't I?

I mentally groaned like an immature padawan, not quite sure how else to portray my complete and utter discontentment with the whole thing.

"Ember," Bastila finally addressed me, shocking me out of my reverie. "What are you planning to do after you leave Telos?"

She looked to be hanging on the answer. An answer I didn't really have. I told her as much.

"I don't know," I said. Bastila just nodded, as if understanding or, Force forbid, _expecting_ such an answer. I took a breath to soothe my frayed nerves.

"Surely, it will come to you. Think upon it for a moment."

I stared at her for a few moments and then raised my brow. Of course, I had a crystal clear idea of what she was referring to, but did she really think it was in her power to demand me to leave to find Revan? My thoughts fell upon the memory of my dream again and I looked away from her. I turned my eyes to the soothing cool of the window, watching rushing lights against the gloom of space.

"Ember, I know you probably don't like having this…mission, as it is. But I feel it is as entwined with you as it is with me." I heard her shuffling as she spoke, her voice surprisingly apologetic all of a sudden. "Don't ask me how I know it. It is the Force's doing. Surely you understand?"

If she was speaking of Force Bonds, then yes. I understood perfectly, jarringly well. I sensed some sort of a bond within her, pulling on her being and strained across a thin line…a line that she clung to like it was her only lifeline above a vast, darkened sea.

But it was Carth who spoke, and left me no chance to respond. I was grateful for it.

At first.

"Bastila," he sighed. "Just because you are in _love_ with the man doesn't give you credence to go and recruit people for your own personal undertaking."

I froze at that.

She was…_what_? Was he serious, or was he trying to mess with her head? With _my_ head?

But no, it seemed that he was not. _I_ felt Bastila's stare upon him, viscious and venomous, but I also felt the truth ringing behind his words. He had somehow missed this death-glance (that or he was utterly immune) and plodded on.

"He was my friend too, you remember. And I know him well enough to know that he was a damn capable man."

Bastila, after falling from whatever high perch she had been figuratively sitting upon, whirled completely around to face him. She looked to be debating with herself over what to say – either between snapping away at him or responding politely. After a few tense moments, she stood straight and rigid.

"But why would Ember have his ship?" she asked pointedly, her decision made. "Without him?"

Carth hadn't an answer for that. He just shook his head. "You programmed T3 to find help, if I recall. If there is anyone to ask, it would be that droid."

Slowly, she turned to face the outside like a ballerina on an old music box, as if her carefully tended hopes and her cautionary ways were all falling in on her, crushing her beneath its weight – a weight she could no longer hold up.

"What if something awful is happening?" she asked chokingly, though in a way she tried to hide. She took a breath and her voice grew strong, fervent. "What if this is our signal that he needs us out there, helping him fight the Sith? Yes, I programmed T3 to get help, but only if there was trouble. Only if he needed it."

"Bastila," I said sadly. I wondered if I should've said it, but felt it was necessary. With heavy realism, I spoke. "What if he is dying? What if we're too late?"

"No!" she responded fiercely. My heavy heart tumbled from the zealous worship within Bastila's voice, the pain in it sharp and metal-tongued. "No. I would feel that. I would know. I may only have a string's worth hold on him now but –"

She took a sharp breath, and then she said nothing else. I could not see her face and I was glad for it…I felt the anguish coming from her as strongly as if it were my own. Tears stung at my own eyes from the sheer, overwhelming power of it, and I wondered at her emotional strength. _To hold such a burden, to love like that…_

Many said that I had a burden to carry, but I had overcome it. I did not love the Force. I was thankful for it, like a builder for his tool, but I did not love it. But to love someone completely, overcoming your doubts and giving yourself entirely to it only to...lose it? Utterly?

I could not truly understand her pain.

But in the end, in every situation of agony, it is all the same.

You throw up your defenses. You can ignore the ache of it for a while. But there is always a point where it returns and where you must turn and face the pain if you are ever to survive.

Carth just stood back, watching like I was. He seemed just as overwhelmed by it, and I realized then that I understood her almost as well as he did, which surprised me a little. But between Bastila and I, this was one thing we both had in common -- Revan had, in a way, left us both behind.

"We are going to go after him," she declared with such great finality that I could not brush it away. She faced me with dry eyes. "Please. You've appeared with his ship for a reason. Namiri was brought to us for a reason. You cannot ignore the facts."

_No_, I thought, agreeing with her. _But do you know all of them?_

But what was I supposed to say? _Uh, sorry Bastila, you can't come because some old, strange woman who could apparently see the future and who had also ended up being a Sith Lord said I had to go alone. Sorry. No can do._

"You've seemed to have amassed an army of Jedi already," she commented with a very slight smile. "I'm sure with a bit of training they could serve quite effectively."

And that was when a line was crossed.

"I'll go with you, Bastila," I said slowly, deliberately. "But my friends are my business."

She said nothing to that, turning once again away from me as she walked toward her chair. Nothing could deflate her now that I had given my consent to help her. But how could I deny her? How could I deny her pain, the sharp screech that sung through my veins?

"Thank you," she said quietly. So quietly, I barely heard.

I did not want to be alone in this.

"Of course," I mumbled, just as quietly.

And just the same, thoughts of escape started to bloom. It was so sudden, this inescapable feeling that said I had to be alone in this. It clawed at me. It ate away at my resolve.

I felt as though I was freezing over as I fell over a winter cliff…_this is wrong, somehow, this is not right. _

I did not like it one bit. I hated it, even.

But a part of me knew that it had to be acknowledged all the same.

* * *

"I'll be here," said Carth. He stood by the doorway like a gentleman as Bastila and I left the room. "Just warn me before you leave so I can break the news to Dustil."

Bastila cracked a smile. "Of course, Carth. I'm sure he will be rather disappointed."

I ogled at her. _Did she just use sarcasm?_

She stared at me in return. "What? Why are you staring at me like that?"

"Nothing," I said quickly. "It's nothing."

Carth, by his own choice, would not be accompanying us at this time. He claimed that Revan had told him to do a job and that he was going to do it like a man of his word. He also pledged assistance should the need ever arise and if it was at all possible for him and his men and any other allies he could find to come to our aid.

It was something, at least.

"Naturally, we shall need a base of operations," Bastila had said. This was the woman I was somewhat familiar with, the decisive, driven warrior with a plan. Hope brings out the truth in all of us, it seems. "I will not…_hassle_ you into training your friends, but we will need a place to return to eventually, won't we?"

I had simply nodded and agreed. And just like that, another stone in the path was set.

* * *

It didn't take long. Too soon, I would have to face my friends and declare the news. My gut twisted –I felt this would be one of the hardest things I would have to do.

I would be leading them to their home. A home I would not share. And I was going to have to lie about it.

I opened the door, stepped into the oddly silent room, and looked up to face them all. Namiri was tucked in between Visas and Bao-dur on a sofa; Mira and the Handmaiden were sitting across from each other at a table; Mical's smiling head poked in from the mess hall kitchen; and Atton was curled against a window with his Pazaak cards, very pointedly ignoring me and Bastila's presence.

I frowned at him and he still did not look up.

"Hello, everyone," I said stiltedly, gesturing robotically to the woman next to me. "This is Bastila Shan, a Jedi Knight."

Still, silence. Everyone more or less nodded at her though, except for Atton. Namiri tilted her head but kept her gaze on me, flickering it only once toward Bastila, who was staring at her with a scrutinizing expression.

"So what's she here for?" Mira asked bluntly. Bastila tensed up next to me, but I inwardly smiled and thanked the Force for Nar Shaddaa and red-headed bounty hunters. This conversation had to get off the ground somehow.

"She is coming with us to Dantooine," I explained quietly.

Only then did Atton look up to face me with those watchful, feather grey eyes of his. He must have heard the trepidation in my voice. I gave him a small smile from across the room as he stood and leaned against the back wall, smirking genially and waving his Pazaak cards around.

"Huzzah," he said.

I wanted to laugh. I wanted to feel as though Dantooine was just another step in the journey, just another place we would all be going to.

But no. A plan was forming in my head. And I hoped and prayed to whatever powers I knew of that it would be for the best for them all, my tiny family.

The others looked as though this was the standard, as if they had been expecting this. They continued to go about their business in a normal fashion, talking or messing with cards or organizing supplies, and I was suddenly flooded with great appreciation for them.

After a moment, I looked to Namiri, who was watching me with half-moon eyes. It was clear that her body's fatigue was catching up to her. I walked over to her, leaving Bastila close to the entrance, where Bao-dur was politely greeting her. I nodded to the Handmaiden, who had doubt written all over her face.

"You're coming too," I said, and immediately, she was relieved. I questioned that…and just about everything about her. I knew that later I would have to try and get to know her.

Namiri reached out for my hand and Visas stood and left, resting her hand on my shoulder for a moment before walking away. I felt Visas' presence linger within my mind – there were no spoken thoughts or words, but simple feelings. Contentment, tranquility…but most of all, concern. But she knew where I stood. I was not in the mood for discussing things. Not yet.

Mical was watching me with a distressed expression from the kitchen doorway. I smiled at him too, trying to assuage whatever it was he was worried about. Which, if I knew if right, would be me. Unnecessarily. But with one last look of unease, he too eventually emerged to try and greet the Jedi Knight, Bastila Shan. Surely he had heard of her and her incredible skills of Battle Meditation -- he was easy to distract, at any rate.

I looked upon Namiri, who was watching me hopefully through the shade of fatigue in her eyes. _Of course_, I thought, _of course there is something different with her_. I, having tried so hard to ignore it for so long, could not have noticed the slightest of hints. I was very much _not_ looking for Revan's mark. So why would it have been found? But now, now that Bastila had said something, I felt it very clearly resting upon her spirit, his obvious, quirkily twisted imprint upon the child's soul.

"I'm sorry," I said to her, a whisper. "I'm sorry you have to be dragged into this."

She shrugged at that, looking upon me with wide silver pools. She squeezed my hand, and I marveled at how much she depended on me already. It made my steps heavier. "I'm coming with you, no matter what."

She sounded so…adamant. Just like Bastila had been, and maybe even for the same reason. For Revan.

What was I – a gateway?

Yes, that was it. I was a gateway to Revan, and surely not much more use than that.

But I could only nod. "Of course," I said. "We're going together."

And she believed me. Oh, Force, how quickly she believed me. How could I deny her? How could I deny her faith placed within me?

I needed a guide to her planet, didn't I? And who else but this girl, this slight girl of no more than fifteen, to show the way? Already I felt the warm strings of a bond forming between us, and I was sad for her. She was so young. She didn't need to be so entwined in this darkness already.

But maybe, because of Revan, it was already too late for any such precaution.

Finally, I looked upon Atton. He too was watching me hopefully, grabbing, in his own subtle way, for the true answers. He knew so much…he was too sharp for his own good. That, I knew, was how he had survived all those years ago.

But those true answers, at least, were something I could give him. This truth…this could be my final gift to him, my final farewell before I would have to leave them all on Dantooine. How could I deny any of them? How could I deny anyone?

He approached me and looked down upon me and I could not look at him anymore. With one of his hands, he wiped something off of my cheek, his fingers as soft as the leather of his jacket. It took me a moment to realize that there had been nothing there – that it was merely an excuse to touch my face.

"It's just Dantooine," he said softly. "I know, I know." He raised his hands in defeat. "You had to stop a settler's war there the first time. And the second time was…bad. But third time's a charm, right?"

I laughed a bit. I couldn't help it. He always made me laugh, even now, when I had to choke out a lie.

"Oh yes," I said. "…third time's a charm."


	7. Six: There is no Shame

A/N: So, ok, this chapter is fairly pointless plotwise. Almost. But, since I'm not a fan of being all "And poof, they were on Dantooine" I've decided this is one of those transition chapters. Kind of boring, and in my opinion, a litter funnier at parts instead of sad all the time…a break in the action, tying some ends while creating others. There is this chapter planned, though the next ones have been changing in dimension. There may be more interlude chapters. We'll see.

But bear with me! And hopefully, together (you and I, writer and reader) shall both come through this better than how we once were. Now, forget my speeches. Onto the chapter!

_Disclaimer__: I do not own any of the KOTOR universe. None. Zip. Zero. Zilch._

* * *

_He is sitting on a stone, waiting for her to emerge, wondering slightly if she has somehow gotten herself into trouble in the three minutes that she has been in the Khoonda Building, and very, intensely bored. Which is never, ever good._

_For when Atton is bored, he often becomes thoughtful. And when he is thoughtful, his brain automatically tends toward the thing that should be thought upon most – which was, quite often, a thing he did not want to think about._

_Ember Tythael, Jedi Extraordinaire._

_But he thought he knew what Jedi were like. All…peace-loving and selfless and _fake_._

_She isn't like that, though. Yeah, she tends to want to help people for no reason, and yeah, he has to wonder if she is a touch suicidal sometimes, but there is something completely genuine to her that makes her…other. Only an 'almost Jedi'. A not-quite Jedi._

_This is because, when she finally emerges from the mahogany door, she is very angry. As far as he knows, Jedi never, ever become angry. Not unless they are forced to, something of which he knows too well and decides not to think about._

_No. This is real, human anger. She is not happy about something. The downward glint in her eye and the heaviness to her steps (not to mention the fact that he observes her quite often and feels he knows the difference between her emotions) raises a red flag before his eyes._

_He is not quite sure what to say. She looks coiled up as if to spring._

_He waits until she stands before him. She stands there for quite a long time, fists clenched, eyes downward. But slowly, ever so slowly, her muscles begin to chink out of place. _

_"Atton?" she asks him, and he is surprised by it. He stares at her, wondering just what kind of advice he could give a woman such as she. He is almost flustered by it._

_"Yeah?"_

_"Am I wrong?" she asks him earnestly, and again, he is thrown off. People didn't ask him for advice. People didn't ask him the difference between wrong and right. People didn't even care that he existed, apparently, until...recently. _

_He hates this. He hates being a coward from his own memory._

_But he hides it and tilts his head and looks confused, for her benefit._

_"Why?"_

_She sighs deeply and looks away, as if just as flustered as he. _

_"Am I wrong for trying to find the Masters? For, somehow, trying to save people?"_

_He stares at her again, unable to help himself, and he knows that he cannot answer that question without answering one of his own. _

Was it wrong for her to save me? Back then, when everything broke?

_Why she would even care about his opinion still shocks him, at least slightly, and he ponders upon this to try and get his own question to disappear. Still, he doesn't have an answer for her. And she looks to be expecting one, the way she is looking at him with those eyes clouded in self-doubt._

_He didn't know a Jedi could feel self-doubt. He didn't know a Jedi could be genuinely human without any provocation. How the hell did she call herself a Jedi? Of course, he probably should have been listening when she said, time and time again, that the Order pretty much kicked her out. But he still has to wonder if being a Jedi every really disappears. If being a Jedi only goes away once you die._

_"I don't know," he answers truthfully. He does this, he notes, for her sake entirely._

_And then she sighs angrily and begins to walk away._

_"Damn Vrook," he hears her mutter. And he cannot help but smile, despite the fact that she is practically stomping away from him._

_He didn't know Jedi cussed either._

_

* * *

Chapter 6 - There is no Shame _

_Atton_

"Move," I muttered. The little pipsqueak, conveniently sitting exactly where I needed to put the box, just looked at me with those huge eyes of hers and then tilted her head to the side before realizing that I was carrying a box of supplies. A box of supplies that never should have left the ship, might I add.

"Little…person," I continued, forgetting her name. Or, probably not caring enough to remember -- this option was a bit more likely. "Move or you'll be smashed by medpacs and stims."

She decided that it would be in her best interest to move, and did so. I put the box down where it was supposed to go within the _Hawk_, and turned back around to find her still staring at me.

"What?" I asked. I didn't care if I sounded sharp or rude -- I 'won' the job of packing up by losing a bet with Mira I didn't even know I was a part of, and I was still particularly bitter about this fact. Namiri cracked a smile at me, not unlike the ones Ember shoots me when I say something I think is clever and turns out to be really stupid.

"Not in a very good mood often, are you not?" she asked in a strange syntax. "I'm Namiri, remember?"

"No," I shot back, not caring to elaborate and not caring about her name. This girl was following me around for some reason, and I didn't really know why except for a feeling that it was somehow Ember's doing.

"Namiri, will you go and straighten up the starboard dormitories?" said someone in the other hallway.

_Speak of the devil…_

Instantly, Namiri agreed and skipped away to do Ember's bidding like a good little Jedi pet. Ember appeared, standing exactly where Namiri had been, as if replacing her.

"You got everything?" she asked, quiet as usual. I shrugged, trying to ignore the fact that she sounded a bit strained.

"I guess."

She watched me for a moment with those dull brown eyes and I shifted where I stood, uncomfortable under her watchful stare. She placed a hand on her hip. Finally, she sighed.

"Try to be nice to Namiri, will you?" Despite the words themselves being directory and annoyed, there was a smile lurking on her face. I tried to stare her down.

"I will when she stops following me around," I said. "I wonder who told her to do that."

I gave her the eye. She just laughed at me, and my face flushed.

"Just go and prime the ship, you flyboy," she said. And if I hadn't known her, I would have thought that she sounded cheerful.

But there was something else there…dread, I decided. She didn't want to leave, even though this Bastila woman was pressing it on her. I had to wonder at that, still.

I wondered about a lot of things as I sat in the pilot's chair and pressed the buttons that would prime for take-off. I wondered about Dantooine. I wondered about ships and their making. But most of all, I wondered about the nickname Ember had given me and her laugh and her smile when she said it.

_Flyboy._

And I found I couldn't stop grinning until after we were all on board and taking off.

* * *

I was sitting in my chair. The blue of hyperspace was flying past in striking whirls, and as it was, Pazaak had become extremely boring.

So I sat back and listened to the voices sliding in from the main hold. I caught snatches of stories, one after the other. Handmaiden discussing something with the small girl before the voices faded away. The fresher running loudly in the background. Mical eating in the main hold before disappearing to re-stock or whatever it was he did.

Mostly boring. Except for one. And even that one was only marginally interesting because of who was involved.

"So the Navi computer is still locked," said a sharply-accented voice. Bastila, no doubt about it. I figured she was speaking to Ember. She hadn't tried too hard to talk to any of the rest of us, and I couldn't help but be thankful.

"Yes. Even after the strange interference we faced, it remains as locked as ever."

I had to give Ember some credit. She was astoundingly calm considering how impatient Bastila could be at times.

"Interference?"

"Yes. But Bao-dur figures it was nova ray interference, and nothing to worry about," Ember said. I thought about what she said for a moment and shrugged off my smuggler's instinct. It didn't matter if she was lying or not. I would have lied to Bastila too.

It probably had something to do with the Force, anyway. And no matter what Ember said, I didn't (wouldn't!) understand.

"Where's Namiri?" Bastila asked curiously.

"She in the dormitory with Visas," Ember said softly, a bit of tension in her voice. It was clear even to me that Bastila thought of Namiri as more of a tool than a person, and naturally, it would be even more evident to Ember.

No matter how I felt about Bastila, though, I couldn't blame her. I mean, if Revan was her friend or whatever, then she probably wanted to get to him pretty fast. And apparently, the pipsqueak was important in this undertaking.

There was nothing more said.

I heard fading footsteps. And again, I had a feeling that I was alone. I closed my eyes and laid my head back, whistling a base tune that I had heard somewhere but long forgotten the importance of.

Then, another voice. A willowy voice annoyingly close to my ear. I winced after I jumped half a foot in the air, swinging full around to face the girl leaning out of the co-pilot's chair. I'm sure I did not look happy to see her.

"Hello," said Namiri, a smile on her round little face despite it. A single bang of hair fell into my eyes, which I found strange. I hadn't needed a haircut in a long time.

"What do you want now?" I asked, facing the computer intently, as if I was working on something. Although really, the only thing I had to do was to pick up my fallen Pazaak cards.

In the corner of my eye, I saw she looked a little hurt by this. I sighed, trying to soften my tone. _Stupid kids. Stupid, stupid kids and their damn…sympathetic ways._

"No, seriously. What are you doing in here?" She tilted her head for a moment, as if listening to something else. "Bastila was looking for you."

She grimaced. I held back a laugh at the sheer…strangeness of it on her face. She looked as though she was deeply affronted by such a thing as Bastila.

"I know," she said quietly. "I know it isn't very nice." I was slightly absorbed by her lilting accent, trying to place it as she continued to speak. "But I don't like how all the time she stares at me."

I nodded, actually agreeing after I sorted through her fading and recurring syntax. I continued to surprise even myself.

"She does that, apparently."

She just nodded and looked straight ahead toward the blue of hyperspace, her silver-white eyes dancing with azure lights. I watched her for a moment before turning back to my Pazaak cards. We both sat there in the cockpit, bathed in blue and utterly silent, she entranced by the color of hyperspace and me distracted by my fading cards. Somehow – I'm not sure how – this arrangement worked.

"How old are you, anyway?" I eventually asked and immediately regretted it. I began stumbling around for words since it was probably really awkward for a man such as me to be asking such a question. "You look short," I added lamely.

She just turned to me. The blue remained in her eyes, icy and chilling even while a naive smile crossed her face.

"Ember says I'm 15 by…standard dating, or something the like. How old are you?"

I smirked. "Old enough."

"Really?" she asked curiously. "Did Ember tell you that?"

I noted again how strangely devoted to Ember this girl was already. And again, I couldn't blame her. People were, for lack of a better word, attracted to Ember. People would follow her to the ends of the galaxy. People would die for her for no reason at all.

I would die for her.

And not a single part of my mind denied it. It was almost terrifying, in a way. The sheer power of it was overwhelming. Tremendous. Something that could change a person, completely and utterly, and transform them into something they didn't recognize. Or something they were secretly grateful for.

"I just know," I said quietly, a bit late.

"Oh. Ok."

Silence again. I could feel her staring at me like a person would stare at a holo-projector – so intently one could lose their eyesight. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

"What's wrong with Ember?" she asked in a small voice, as if she sensed some kind of importance behind it. I stared at her for a second, taken-aback.

"What do you mean by that?"

Namiri shook her head. Her deep brown hair swayed back and forth across her pale face.

She sighed again. "She looks this way at you, and she watches, but she never enters, even though she laughs when she's around you. She just…smiles at the nice blond man. And she tries to be nice to the snow woman. And the woman with red-hair? They talk a lot too, and she's funny. So why is she still miserable?"

I blinked. Other than that, I wasn't quite sure what to do, much less say. The girl, despite her appearance, saw more than she maybe realized. The very fact that Ember was…watching me was oddly moving. My heart was prodded with spears, and I didn't mind the jolt of it.

"I watch her a lot," she admitted, almost a bit shamefully, probably taking my silence as a bad sign. "There's a part of her missing somewhere. Something in the…in the air around her is missing."

"We know," I said quietly. Understanding it more than the girl knew.

She continued on with distant eyes. "It's...sad."

And I nodded because there could be no other words for it.

It was then that something in the back of my mind pricked. I turned around, and there stood Ember in the doorway with a strange expression. Like she was almost angry or sad, but mostly just weary. As if she couldn't feel anything else beyond it.

"Namiri," she said, her voice strained. "Visas wants you."

With that, the girl stood. She placed a hand on my shoulder, and the importance of it reverberated within me even though I didn't understand why. And then she walked away, the pretty pet of the _Ebon Hawk_.

I turned to face Ember. She stared at me with indecipherable eyes before she cracked a half-crazed smile.

I spun my chair around to face her full on.

"Ember," I probed intently, even with a tinge of worry.

She titled her head slightly but there was…nothing else. Blank. I knew I was worried about her, not even trying to hide it anymore – and I had no doubt she felt my worry rumbling wherever the Force collected emotions.

"Get some rest," I pleaded, despite the protests of my pride. Despite the worries that said she would laugh in my face.

She just shook her head. "Later," she said.

I watched her go, not sure what else to say, until she turned directly to face me. She took back what she did. She entered the cockpit again, standing directly in front of me, mere inches between her body and my knees. Her small hand nudged the strand of hair dangling before my eyes.

"I promise."

* * *

I was fidgety in the cockpit after that, not quite sure what to think, especially when Bastila sauntered into the room, settling directly into the co-pilot's chair. I didn't even look at her. I stared at the blinking ship controls and watched how the cobalt outside the glass glimmered off of every surface like a cold mirror.

She didn't say anything to me at first. I flashed a glance at her. She was staring at the controls as intently as I was, but doing nothing more than that.

Sheesh. Was there ever a collection of Jedi with bigger emotional baggage?

_Nope,_ I thought. _You're just lucky like that._

Eventually, the awkwardness built until I cleared my throat. Her eyes shot up to stare at me. I shrugged it off.

"You, uh…ok?" I asked.

She sighed. "It's nothing."

I just nodded, lifting my eyebrows. I didn't particularly want to sit in the same room as her with such a heavy, weighted silence dangling dangerously over my head, so I slowly stood and made a gesture with my arms towards the door.

"I'll, uh, be going now."

"What have you been taught of the Force?" she asked, almost in the same moment. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and fidgeted on my feet. Not particularly a question I wanted to answer at the moment.

"It exists," I answered blithely. She didn't even twitch.

"I feel like...I feel as though I have seen you before, but I am not sure where," she said. Again, I raised my brow and shrugged.

"I've been around," I said. I didn't feel like getting into it, not with this woman who couldn't seem to choose between being impatient and hot-headed or calm and wistful. Who would one moment speak to me and next just blow me off.

She just nodded.

"I see," she said. "I'm just…remembering things, I suppose."

I made a motion for the door, but couldn't help but be curious. This must have been one powerful woman to have helped Revan (a good Revan, as far as I knew) to defeat the Darth Malak. I lingered by the door, trying to phrase my question in the however small amount of time that she was choosing to actually speak to me.

"So this was your ship," I said, more matter-of-factly than I expected.

"Yes," she said. "Well, Revan's really. And we had to steal it in order to obtain it…so it never really was his either. It's a mysterious thing, simply appearing out of the dark. The Masters would call it the will of the Force."

"The Masters are dead," I couldn't help but add, mostly before I thought about it. She just looked down upon the computers and I could not see her expression. I hadn't meant it to be cruel or rude. It was just…truth. Blunt truth.

"Yes, well." She finally turned around to face me, an unreadable expression on her pretty face. "Things haven't exactly turned out the way we've expected recently. They don't usually, I find."

I shrugged.

"If I know anything about the Force," I said. "It's that it has a nasty sense of humor."

Finally, a minute smile spread across her red lips.

"Sometimes," she said.

* * *

The trip to Dantooine was both long and short. Much shorter than the trip back to Telos. Longer as the moments stretched endlessly into snippets of conversation, snapshots of dreams, and thoughts of deep things that lied just below the surface I couldn't break.

On one of the last days, Ember returned to the cockpit, standing hesitantly in the doorway. I turned and stared at her defiantly, staring her down until she dragged herself into the co-pilot's chair. I frowned at her, but she spoke first.

"I promised I would come back."

"No," I gently reminded her. "You promised to rest."

She said nothing to that. It hurt me to see her this way and not understand what it was that was eating away at her.

"You've not been sleeping?"

She shook her head. "Not well."

A thought appeared in my head, and I went with it. I took off my soft leather jacket and stood to tuck it behind her head. A smile was on her face as she closed her eyes.

"This moment should be recorded. You never remove that thing."

I smirked, but was too oddly flustered to say anything more intelligent than, "Yeah."

It was moments like these, moments where she smiled and cracked jokes and called me a 'flyboy', that reminded me that she was still fighting whatever it was that was eating away at her. That a human being existed there and not a tortured soul. That she would end up being ok.

"Just be nice to it. I only got one."

"Really?" she asked, opening her eyes to face me with skepticism. I looked down on her and smiled.

"Yeah. Really."

Silence lulled into being, soft compared to the silence that was forced upon me like a lockdown when Bastila had sat in that same chair before. There were so many things Ember and I could have talked about. I could have asked her about Bastila, or even Namiri. I could have asked anything. I could have asked for answers.

But I looked at her and saw her tired frame, and my brain fried. Everything scrambled. I didn't know what to do or what to say, like I was caught under some strange spell.

"We'll be landing within two hours," I told her as I sat back in my chair. She smiled and nodded.

"What else?" she asked me, facing me with a knowing expression. The blue of hyperspace clashed in an ugly way with her leather-brown eyes, and that made them all the more real.

I fidgeted some more, not sure what else to do.

"What's wrong with you?" I finally asked.

She looked at me. She smiled in a funny way.

"That's quite a question."

"Ember," I said tightly. "I'm not an idiot."

She sighed and nodded and sighed again, as if trying to expel all of the air from her system. "I know that."

I stared at her, trying to prod her to go on. She sat up a little bit and crammed a fist into her leg.

"I've just been…Force, I don't know. I don't feel like myself. I feel all screwed up inside ever since we left. Ever since…I don't know. I don't know anything." She sounded frustrated by this fact, the fact that she didn't know anything. I tilted my head at her, egging her on.

"You seem to have a plan in mind," I replied.

She faced me with stricken eyes for a moment, but she closed them and I could no longer get a read on her expression. She turned away from me and faced the viewport, fidgeting like I had been only a few moments ago. She didn't turn back to me.

"If I for some reason disappeared mysteriously," she said, jokingly in the way that was jarring because it wasn't really joking. "what would you do?"

I shrugged to cover up the empty feeling that enveloped my gut.

"Go…somewhere."

She nodded slowly, probably expecting this answer. "Would you ever consider becoming a Jedi? For me?"

_For you, I would jump off of a cliff._

The words were so close to falling out of my mouth that I had to pretend to wipe my face to cover my mouth. Being a Jedi was serious business. Being a Jedi wasn't just a job, it was a total and complete lifestyle. A lifestyle I probably didn't fit in any way, shape, or form.

"I don't think I would fit being a Jedi," I said to her. She shook her head.

"You are always debasing yourself."

"For good reason."

She sighed again, this time in exasperation. I was oddly gladdened by this.

"You have potential, Atton. I'm not going to lie to you. You could be an extremely effective Jedi knight if you wanted to be," she said, examining a piece of her hair in her fingers. It looked so dark in this light, almost black. "Do you want to be?"

I shrugged.

"I don't know."

She just nodded. "Well, indecision is a step up, I suppose. It means you're thinking about it."

"Whatever floats your boat."

She sighed and then yawned, funnily enough. "You asked to be a Jedi. To help me, or whatever it was you said."

I didn't say anything to that, and strangely, I felt as though she understood. We sat there for a long time in the dim glow, seeming to grow a little dimmer by the moments as we came closer to our destination. The cockpit inched closer and closer to being enveloped in the dark of outer space, and neither of us minded.

"Yeah, well, there are enough Jedi on this ship to last you a while," I said after a while. And she smiled at that.

"I've noticed."

I sat there, suddenly very tired. I yawned too. She leaned into her chair and shifted a bit, leaning her head on the side panel, her cheek against my jacket that was dangling over the back of the seat.

"Hey Atton," she asked, actually sounding kind of cheerful. "Do you know any stories?"

I snorted at that. "Why? You want me to put you to sleep?"

She laughed. "It's just to pass the time," she said. I raised my eyebrow at her and she grinned lethargically. "And sleep wouldn't hurt."

"Well ok," I said, "You asked for it."

I launched into a rollicking story about a Jedi Princess and her crew of misfits from across the galaxy, each having their own story and each having their own problems that the poor Jedi Princess had to fix while not thinking she was a Jedi Princess at all.

She laughed often, most likely because of my lackluster story-telling ability. It wasn't like I had anything else to do. But I found I was in a better mood than I had been in a long time, sitting there, laughing with her and feeling like the fool without the shame.

And finally, while facing the viewport, I ended it. She had been silent for some time.

"And the Jedi Princess sat in her ship and asked for a story from her roguishly handsome smuggler. And it was good and it made her happy again. Finally, the whole group of Misfits blasted into the beyond, found a nice planet, and lived there until they grew old and died. Even the whiny blond historian."

And when I turned to look at Ember, grinning like the fool I was, her head was tilted to the side, resting against the side-cushion of the seat.

She was asleep. And there was still a smile on her face.

* * *

We then had a very uneventful landing. Although, the almost offended look Ember gave me when she woke up was still pretty funny. Her eyes had bugged out and everything, as if she had no idea where she was and why she was sleeping there with my jacket over her shoulder.

I had snickered at that. To which she threw my jacket at my face and erupted into a similar spasm of snickers herself.

Unpacking began in a similarly uneventful way. Mical was in charge of moving the medical equipment, and the Handmaiden had volunteered herself to assist him. Mira and Bao-dur handled some of the weaponry equipment, while Namiri was doing odd-jobs and Visas was somehow inspecting the outside of the ship.

"Statement: You meatbags are as boring creatures as ever. I think I shall resort to shutting myself down in order to escape the mediocrity of it all."

No one said anything to HK. We were all more than used to his occasional rants by now. T3 booped at him as if annoyed. Namiri giggled at that.

We were greeted by settlers and the Administrator before being offered the rooms we would presumably stay in for a long while. We walked as a large group, followed by the settler's who had agreed to assist us, toward the simple building that sat against the horizon.

It was then that Ember tried to speak to the Handmaiden.

"What's your name?" she asked the pale woman. Her icy eyes locked upon Ember, who walked calmly, collected. The Handmaiden looked almost…disturbed by her question, as if having a name was some taboo, otherworldly thing.

"I'm…a Handmaiden of Atris."

"Is that what you want to be called?" Ember asked quietly.

The woman looked shocked, offended even. "I'm not called by any other name."

Ember silently appraised her. "Ok," she said, and decided to drop the conversation at once. The Handmaiden looked conflicted, as if she wasn't quite sure about her own answers anymore.

Eventually we were in our rooms within a newer compound close to the Khoonda building. The moments passed so quickly it was as if the rest of us were trapped in slow-motion.

And then, after getting everything arranged, I suddenly stood alone in a room with a bed and a dresser, a room that was supposed to be mine. I stared blankly upon the walls and felt no attachment to it whatsoever. To me, it was just another room, this fact made even more prominent by the fact that Ember wanted to ultimately return to the rebuilt Jedi Enclave.

I sighed as I dropped my bag of armor and weapons on the floor. I didn't care if this room was mine somehow. Everything had happened so fast. It was too weird for words.

I sat on the bed (my bed?) and rubbed my face with my hands. I sat there for a long time, thinking upon things, like rooms and their importance, the sun that was setting in the sky, and why Ember had even brought us here in the first place. I lied down and almost fell asleep, strangely exhausted by the fast-moving pace of everything that had been going on, annoyed by the fact that Dantooine was not as restful as I expected. But maybe, just maybe, I would be allowed a moment to recuperate.

And then, my door slid open. I sat up so fast my head spun.

"Did I scare you?" asked Ember with a smile. She stood in the doorway, wearing a new set of pale work robe in her usual baggy style.

I rolled my eyes as I pushed myself off of the bed. "No."

"Good," she said. "Come and train with us."

I stared at her. She was getting things started already? She wanted to move that quickly? She watched me with careful eyes, as if she was treading on a subject made of glass. I smirked at the irony of the whole situation…the moment I settle down for a nap would be the moment she would choose to bother me about my training. She probably knew it too.

"You mean I don't even get to settle in?"

She observed me confusedly. "But it isn't like you have anything to unpack."

I laughed lightly under my breath, struck by her strange innocence about the whole thing. "I wonder whose fault that is."

"Please. Come and train with us."

"No," I said finally. "I don't want to. I'm tired."

She stood there for a couple more moments, completely silent. She pursed her lips and stared at me, a strange kind of desperation burning in her leather-brown eyes.

Then, a tiny, mischievous smile spread across her face.

"I understand if you're too scared to fight Mical," she said solemnly. "I hear he has quite the choke-hold."

I sighed exasperatedly. "I am not too scared to fight Mical," I said slowly.

"And I've heard Namiri has quite the sucker punch."

I rolled my eyes again as I stood before her, staring down at her petite frame with distanced annoyance.

"Fine," I mumbled. "You have got to be the most ridiculous, stubborn woman I have ever met."

She grinned at that. "I'm glad."

Relief became clear upon her face once I agreed. I cocked my head at that, but she was already beginning to walk out, unwilling to give me any sort of answer for her strange behavior.

"Why do you want me out there so badly?" I asked with a smirk, just before she disappeared into the shadowy hallway. She whirled around to look at me, and stood there with an indecipherable expression before she answered me. I expected it to have something to do with fighting or improving my technique, but as always, Ember managed to surprise me.

"Because I just do. Because I like to have you around."

My smirk disappeared. She watched me with that same strange desperation in her eyes, her words ringing with utter and complete truth.

"Oh, really?"

She smiled slightly, turning away from me as she spoke softly, openly. "Why would I lie about something like that?"

I stepped toward her and stared firmly down upon her dark head, my smirk returning as I warily placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Good question."

She snorted and began to drag me away by my wrist, about which I did not complain except to make her laugh.

* * *

A/N: Ha! You can tell I'm not the biggest fan of writing HK-47…I just never know where to put him, really. And Bastila is a little…nutzo in my story. Heh. And you will probably tell that I wrote this late and night and published it the next morning. I was tired of looking at it. It's done to me...and probably not as good as it should be, but whatever. :) I've been pressed to write, but with school starting up again, its harder to get into the groove. I'll do my best to get an update out every week or so.

Standard Dating, I think I made up. I mean, year cycles are going to be different on each planet, right? So…there has to be some sort of standard age system that computers can figure by blood sample or whatever.

And Atton and Ember get to have their fun moments together. I picture them as teasing like that, when times are better, but what about you? Tell me if you thought it was too childish or something. Ember is a playful child at heart, which will be further revealed later in the story, you see.

And even if you mysteriously think nothing's wrong, review anyway! Come one, come all! If you really like a person's writing, tell them. In the immortal words of Alpha Cucumber, reviews are even better than chocolate to a writer. *pleads pathetically*

At any rate, thanks for reading! :D

Next Time: Training, thinking, and the meeting of others. Something is revealed…can it get any more strange?


	8. Seven: Throw me Away

A/N: I'm BACK! It's true…here we go.

I'm warning you all now. This chapter…is a bit twisted. Forgive any mistakes. My computer hates me sometimes.

_Disclaimer: Please, I beg of you, oh gods of the copyright, to forgive me for thinking I owned anything. Because I don't. Clearly. ;)_

* * *

_Chapter 7 – Throw me Away_

_Ember_

I took a deep-reaching breath and walked out onto the balmy plains, followed closely by Atton. The evening sun was dipping behind the distant hills and the moisture in the sky had evaporated, leaving us to air out our space-weary bones in comfortable conditions. I waved to the others, milling about in a distant, empty field. In an almost comical fashion, all of their heads turned to me at once, like gizka lazing on a rock.

Mical was smiling grandly, coming forth to meet me; Visas had a slighter version of a smile on her face. Bao-dur and Mira were laughing over some joke the rest had missed, while the Handmaiden faced me with indifferent attention.

"Didn't think _you'd_ be joining us, Rand," playfully called Mira. Bao-dur continued to shake with laughter – an inside joke, maybe?

Atton smirked. "Gotta keep you on your toes, don't I?"

Mira jovially held back a few more chuckles before nodding and turning her oh so rapt attention toward me.

"So what's this all for again?"

"Practice. Get our blood pumping. I don't know," I said. "Am I supposed to have a reason for everything?"

Mira looked at Atton who looked at the Handmaiden who was staring at me.

"Yeah," they said in unison. The Handmaiden just nodded.

I rolled my eyes, but I was grinning too.

"Just go stand in a line."

Sheesh. Padawans these days.

* * *

The partners were randomly selected…for the most part.

Each chose a number, any number, which turned out to have been a bad turn of phrase. Atton was 64, Mical was 3, Mira was 7.5, Bao-dur was 1/2, the Handmaiden was 2, and Visas was 0. I threw the numbers in a flight cap, and once the numbers were drawn, Atton had been paired up with Mical.

With the slightest of movements, I hid that result and came up with a new one. Honestly, I didn't want _blood_.

By the time I had sorted out the numbers, the sparring pairs came out. Namiri stood with me – when I wasn't mentoring or if my mentoring wasn't necessary, I would do some basics with her. She would need them.

Bastila also resided, smiling blandly as she observed the sorting, ready to be of assistance to train the generation of Lost Jedi.

"Here's how it is," I declared. "Atton versus Mira, Mical versus Bao-dur, Visas versus Handmaiden."

Almost perfect pairs if you asked me. I had faith that the Handmaiden's Echani skills would more than serve to help her against a Force User.

They all arranged as I asked them to, standing with a couple of feet between them and their battling partner, separated by strips white rope lying on the ground that Namiri had somehow managed to scrounge up. Atton and Mira were grinning at each other with dark delight, while Bao-dur and Mical regarded each other as gentlemen. Visas and the Handmaiden were completely passive.

"Bastila will be observing you. Listen to what she says. For my sake."

I saw grins erupt across many of their faces. All of them except one.

"Namiri," I said to the girl. She wore a slight frown, trying to hide her disappointment, but perked up a little when I acknowledged her. "You'll be fighting me from time to time. Is that ok?"

She nodded cheerfully.

Finally, after everyone looked prepared, I raised up my hand. Everything went silent and still – I could feel the adrenaline in the air.

"Begin!" I shouted.

And the quiet plains erupted into sound.

* * *

For a little while I watched the fights like a proud mother hen. Like a good master. Namiri even proved to be a little tougher than I expected, throwing a few good shots at me and actually hitting me a couple of times. She had a good feel for a person's guard, and I told her so.

"Thank you," she said, blushing a deep red. "I have to know the place to get by, neh?"

I nodded, figuring that was how she said 'breaking the guard'.

"Don't we all."

I didn't mean to say it metaphorically or even did I think about it that way until it was out of my mouth. I smirked at myself. Maybe I'd make a good Jedi after all.

Or maybe…

"Ember?" I felt Namiri tap my arm, and I realized that I had been staring off into space like some grief-stricken thing. I tried to smile at her.

"It's nothing."

She was a good girl, too good. She let it go, right then and there, but didn't move from my side. Was this all the Force's doing? The Force Bond? The childish innocence belonged to Namiri in its entirety, but the love I could feel coming off of her? Despite it all, I had a feeling that it was not for me. And even still, I was mixed parts sad and relieved at this.

I wanted...

I continued to watch the spars. I switched up the pairs, even letting Atton and Mical getting throws at each other. I listened as Bastila gave her notes to the others. I kept doing this, kept watching them, kept fighting with Namiri until I could finally face the fact that I was trying to hide from something.

So I stopped fighting. I stood there and I watched with as passive as an expression I could manage as things starkly rearranged themselves in my mind. I didn't care to try and control my thoughts, to think in a Jedi-like manner. I didn't care about that, not right now.

I wanted…to know what I wanted.

Deep down, what I truly, truly wanted and not what I was forced into. What did Ember want? Throw away all the prophecies and the heavy handed dreams of some fiery, shadowy thing. Throw it all away except for who I am and what I feel and look for something deeper there. _Look for it_, Ember. Who am I beneath all the glossy Jedi-training and the dark scars of the past few months?

And I stood there, and for some reason, I thought of Namiri. I thought of her, when I first saw her after she regained consciousness. I thought of what I had seen.

A lost child. Someone who doesn't know who they are or where they're going.

And that, I realized, was why I cared about her so much. Because I knew. Because Namiri was _me_.

Take away the gloss and the 'saber and the prophecies, and I was lost underneath.

"Hey? Ember?" someone was shouting, and I didn't recognize who it was over the strong blast of wind, so I didn't care to look up. I just lifted my hand and said,

"You can stop now."

And then I turned around and walked away. Walking away, on the plains of my distant childhood, walking because I was sure that I was going absolutely, completely insane.

Walking away, because _that_ was what I wanted.

* * *

I knew these plains. I had memories here.

I knew these plains with every inch of my being, having rolled in them and ran in them, screaming and laughing as I tumbled in them. I managed a smile at these memories, even when I thought of Revan then.

He had always been such a troublemaker. A troublemaker with a heart of gold. And Malak…no, Alec. I had, up until the very last day, refused to call him Malak. It wasn't him. Phonetically, it wasn't much of a change, but to me, it was like twisting up his heart.

And, from what I heard, it did. And Revan had to kill him, according to Carth.

Revan, his best friend. His _brother_.

Alec had always been the soft one, the sweet one. Revan, the leader. And there, standing proudly next to them, had always been me, the little girl people fawned over.

In the end, it was me who had to walk away then, too. I couldn't stand to see them anymore, not after the Malachor, not after I realized how badly they had all been warped. That, in the end, they had become people I didn't know and it hurt because I loved them both with all of my heart.

I lumbered along, through the long grasses and setting sun, wondering if someone was coming after me. _Eh_, I thought. _It's alright if they don't. I love them all too much._

It struck me how that could have been construed as either a memory of the past or as an actual thought. It was applicable to both times.

I walked into my room.

I sat on my bed. I stared at a wall. I sorted things out, the truth behind them and the reasons there too.

And I searched for myself.

I was not going to go after Revan for Kreia's sake. Not anymore. That much was clear from day one, somewhere in my heart. I didn't care if Kreia loved me anymore. It was wrong.

I was going to go for Namiri's sake, the girl who loved someone, someone, I figured, who was probably Revan himself. To find the truth of what happened to Revan. To find out about what had twisted him so.

And ultimately, I would go for the rest of their sakes. I would rather die than let the same fate happen to Atton or Mira or anyone else like it did to Revan and Kreia. Dying would be a comfort, if I failed. But I would not fail this time. My friends, my little family of broken Jedi, would not be twisted into things I did not know. And if that meant leaving them…

Then it did. And Kreia would somehow end up being right after all.

I knew there was no other way. It was the only way. They needed someone who wasn't having a crisis all the time to lead them. They needed someone sturdy and capable and not _me_.

I had to save them, though. Even if it was through, irony of ironies, my first failure with Revan. Revan was the only way I could figure out how to stop it all before it became worse, even if they all had already become...something else. That was why I was pulled to him. That was why I was having dreams.

And then, it was like something in me just...broke. Something shattered. Something...fell apart.

That was when I began to cry. I curled up in a ball and cried and cried and sobbed until I was emptier than anything I had ever known. I cried because it was one of the few things I could control. I cried because leaving was the last thing I wanted, but in the same turn, the only thing I could do. Force or no Force, that was what I felt, deep down. That was, I realized with quiet desperation, what I wanted. To leave.

_To keep them all safe forever, to make up from where I failed…_

And then suddenly, I was asleep. And there were no dreams. None at all.

* * *

_Atton_

_To make up from where I failed…_

I hated it all. I slammed my fist into the wall, held back a scream.

Visas and Mira and the rest of them stood next to me, silent. Namiri was clinging to Visas' hand, staring at the floor, as if trying to forget what she had heard. Her eyes were too shiny. Mical was pacing fiercely. Bao-dur was gone, to fix up a droid, and I would have hated him for it if I hadn't known that that was how he dealt with things.

But none of us could enter. None of us had the courage or the desire to be screamed at or to be closer to the pain than we already were.

I felt like my heart was…well, _dying_. Her cries tore me up, every single one of them, and with every cry, it was harder for me to move to comfort her. It went on and on until I was frozen, completely frozen, trying the hardest I could not to fall over to break down or something.

I felt it in the Force, too. I felt every cry, _every single tear_ that fell on her face, I felt it in _every single cell_ of my body.

My damn, damn, stupid, weakness. As much as I said I did, I really didn't try to reach out to her, not hardly at all. All I could do was stand there and suffer, not with her but because of her.

Damn it! Damn it all!

Bastila walked over, and I hated her too, for hardly even caring even though I knew she felt it, even though I knew she felt it just the same way I did. And even though Visas finally, finally, managed to put Ember to sleep through the Force and silence those cries, they still rung inside my skull, making my eyes sting and my body hurt.

Visas fell to her knees. She mumbled something incoherent, and I wondered if she was praying or doing some odd Miraluka ritual.

"I've found Juhani," Bastila then announced. She was quieter than usual, said the words as though they should have mattered but couldn't find the thought that said they did. Maybe she did feel it. Maybe she did care.

"So the hell what," Mira muttered.

"I…I'm sure Ember will be – be able to talk with her later…"

That, surprisingly enough, was Mical. And I sympathized with him, just this once, because we both felt it and we both cared and besides me, he was probably the only one who cared _enough_.

I stood there, facing the wall, until everything numbed over.

I wanted to sleep.

So when I managed to stumble back to my room, I threw myself onto my bed, and forced myself, somehow to sleep.

In my dream, I saw Ember dancing between the stars, whispering something, looking even more beautiful than all of the sky. But when I tried to reach her, I couldn't stretch my arms far enough. I ran after her as she danced and I yelled for her but she didn't turn around until I reached a cliff side. I stumbled and fell and fell and fell, and then, finally, I could hear her voice.

"Don't fall, love," she said. "I can't catch very well."

And I stopped falling. There was just…nothing. Nothing but her voice.

"Why can't I catch you? Why didn't I catch you? Why couldn't I catch you?"

_Because_, I said to her in my dream. _You're already holding too much._

* * *

**A/N:** So, yes, what many of you may first say is, "WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG!?"

Well, I don't know. I just…didn't feel like writing. Felt trapped in it, until one day I realized that "Hey! I can write however I feel like and I don't have to feel trapped to one single storyline that I may not even like!" So, if my style seems to have changed, that's probably why. And if you don't like it, I'm really sorry. Really. :(

The second thing many of you may be saying is "Ember is nuts! She's gone zomgbonkers!"

Well…yes. She kind of has.

Don't you think there is a point where you just break down? Where one thing trips you up and it is one long fall to the bottom, and then one long climb back to sanity? I had something similar happen to me. One thing set me off and BLAMMO I was waay upset. And yes, she was happy-ish toward the beginning, but these things sneak up on you, I feel.

I guess this was kind of that moment for her. That pivotal, breaking moment where she realizes why she is going to do what she is doing. I hope it wasn't too confusing…

This chapter does feel to me a bit like a filler, but an important one. Not much actiony action went on, but realizations were made. The plot will continue on next chapter, whenever I get it out.

No matter if you liked it or hated it, please review! Pleeeasee….I love you all forever, you people who review.

A special thanks goes out to SynysterShadow for helping me get off my butt and write by threatening me with one of the characters in their story. And a huge thanks to those who have stuck with me during this long hiatus…:)

Thanks all! And may the force be with you!

_Next Chapter: It's only cemented now. Every reaction, every word...it only makes it more clear._


	9. Eight: In the Shadows of Men

**A/N:** Welcome to Chapter 8. Please keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times. Thank you.

Or, you know, be bored to tears by character building and plot hole fixing. It's all good. *sigh*

_Disclaimer: I don't own anything! Don't hurt me! Ahh!_

* * *

Chapter 8 – In the Shadows of Men

"_Hey Em! What're you doing?"_

"_Emma, wake up."_

"_Ember...let me help you."_

* * *

_Ember_

I was thinking, but not quite sure what about.

Everything, I guess. Which was another way of saying nothing.

My mind was clear to the point where I found that I just couldn't care. My concern, my anguish, my terror, all of it, had been washed away by tears and assuaged into something I didn't understand or even really care to understand. If I was numb, fine. It allowed me to think a little better.

But for an empath, being numb was very much like suddenly falling deaf.

It scared me a little.

My mind was on hard reset, and the smaller things were getting to me before the larger picture could manage to squeeze in. Like, for one, my legs hurt really bad for some reason. And for two, I was kind of hungry.

It was as though I was having some strange, out of body experience – everything was slow, too slow. I probably looked like a zombie. I saw the others' faces and I did my best not to wince, when they looked at me. Mical looked so sorrowful, I wanted to disappear to save myself the trouble.

Why, _why_ had I fallen apart before them? Why couldn't they have been spared at least that? Why couldn't I have just suffered right on through and not have so openly revealed that I was doing so? It would have made things so much easier!

But…no. Not meant to be, I guess. Hindsight is 20/20, but when you're enrapt in an unknown storm, there really isn't much sight of anything at all.

The others, as I shambled around, did their best to try and hide the fact that they were concerned but tended to fail once I was in the vicinity. I subtly brushed them off one by one as I wandered, looking for something I wasn't sure about. Each of them, even youthful Namiri and the distant Handmaiden, turned to me when I would walk by them, even sometimes stopping me to ask how I was doing.

I would smile and say that I was fine, and then my heart would flop because I could see how in their eyes that they did not believe me. Not even Namiri. Not even Handmaiden. Especially not Mical.

Ironically enough, the one I had been looking for, Atton, was nowhere to be seen.

And it was only because I couldn't find him that I realized that I had been looking for him in the first place.

* * *

_"The fool dances in your shadow to gain your favor."_

Wrong.

He dances in my shadow because he's afraid I'll _trip_.

* * *

My stomach growled, and with a sigh, I made my way toward the mess hall. My steps were heavy, but I walked with a purpose, somehow able to avoid the others on my long trek there from my walk in the meadows. Maybe they were avoiding me.

_I _would probably avoid me. I was too emotionally drained to really care.

But of course, the Force enjoyed laughing in my face, and of course, as soon as I walked into the mess hall, I was greeted by the sight of Bastila lounging in a chair, drinking some kind of drink, staring rather intently at a wall.

I almost turned around. I wasn't in the mood for the interrogation I was sure to receive. But after my stomach growled so loud it echoed off the bare walls, I had no choice but to enter the kitchen, my position most likely compromised.

She didn't even look up at me. I stifled a small sigh, wondering why she was giving me such an odd silent treatment. Awkwardly, I shuffled into the room and stood before the clean metal table.

I tried to avoid her at first, quietly slipping to the side of the room to look as though I was busy with something. I managed to mutter a greeting.

"Hello."

Finally, she glanced up at me from an extremely tasty-looking Java. Despite the heavy unease hanging in the room, I easily turned away and began to make one of my own, trying to ignore the searching that lurked in her icy-silver eyes. My tired numbness was already fading, revealing a stark world of watching eyes.

"Good morning," she said, a touch of irony in her voice (something to do with me sleeping for thirteen hours, I was sure). It was all very stiff, but not, I somehow knew, because of me.

I wondered if she disapproved of what had happened.

"It tastes better with cream," she offered smoothly. Her voice became softer as I poured in a plop of ugly, yellowish cream. "Trust me."

I smiled slightly. The Java turned a more sandy-ish, appealing color as I stirred. Still, no matter how hard I tried to focus upon the pungent smelling drink, I could still feel her eyes tracking the back of my neck. Instinctively, I moved my shorter, dark hair in an attempt to cover my face.

"Well, I made contact with Juhani," she said.

I nodded, still stirring. I hadn't much of an idea who this Juhani was except that she was a Cathar and a Jedi. But from Bastila's tone, I sensed some sort of warning behind it.

"You don't sound so excited about that," I said.

I heard her fingernails rap upon the metal table.

"She's heard strange reports of break-ins all over Dantooine. They don't steal anything," she said quickly. "They're just…searching."

I frowned into my drink.

"So she has the proverbial bad feeling about this?" I asked. The hair on the back of my neck stood a little straighter.

"Indeed," Bastila said, "Mostly because she is finding it impossible to track them through the Force."

She gave me a questioning look, as if I would somehow know something, and I looked toward her in a similar fashion. _This is kind of funny_, said a voice in the back of my head. _Neither of you trust each other enough to say anything, yet both of you look to the other for the facts. How does that make sense?_

It doesn't. Nothing does.

"What should we do?" I asked. The slightest of worries tickled the corners of my mind, and when I glanced at Bastila again, I could see that she felt it too.

"I'm not entirely sure…"

I gave a muffled, short sigh. As odd as they were, these break-ins without the stealing, I could not rally myself to go forth and valiantly defeat the wondering band of bandits, or whatever they were. Everything about all of this was odd, from my apathy to Bastila's prolonged silences.

I wanted to go back to sleep. I wanted to do _something_ to shake this stupid fog. All I could bring myself to do was sit in a chair and stare into the quickly cooling mug of Java as though it would solve all the world's problems.

I heard Bastila shift.

"Ember, may I ask you something?"

I blinked one long, exaggerated time before turning towards her. I tilted my head, edging her to continue.

"Well, you see, the other day when you…well, the other day," she said, stirring her cup of java. I inwardly smiled at the fact that she could hardly mention what happened. Either out of embarrassment for herself or for me, I couldn't tell. "I couldn't help but notice how…_in tune_ the others are with you."

I shrugged. "You know about my…talent, right?"

She nodded. "Oh, yes. I remember. Hard to forget, really."

I didn't say anything else. I already gave her an answer, and I was just waiting for her to realize it. After an awkward moment of silence, she looked up at me again.

"It was really quite…moving."

Quite moving. Really. Try so incredibly painful I could barely even think about it.

I could feel her Force signature, plainly and clearly, and knew there was a strange sort of pity there, for the group as a whole. I wasn't surprised by that. She was human and had a heart with her own convictions about certain things. And while neither of us were the best examples of Jedi Code followers , she was compassionate in the face of the unknown. It may have even hurt her that she didn't truly understand the feelings of the others, stuck on the outside as an observer to this strange life we led.

"Does it bother you?" I asked.

"No…" she began, but I tried my best to harden my gaze at her and her lying. She sighed. "Well…I certainly can't _judge_ you, Ember, but it is incredibly…extraordinary."

"As in beyond normal, am I right? Not as in, remarkable?"

"Both," she amended gently. "I will admit that you were quite…likable, back in the days at the academy. You had your own charisma." This, I took to mean, as charisma not at all affected by the overwhelming charm of Revan. "These are extremely strong bonds, however. I can't really fathom why the Force would give you such a gift."

I glanced up at her from my java and she put a hand to her mouth, reddening a little. "I didn't mean that you weren't worthy of it, truly –"

I waved it away. "It's ok," I said. "I don't really know why either."

She watched me, and her silver-blue eyes filled with that same strange pity from before, the same pity for me I had recognized on the old Masters' faces before Kreia had killed them.

"It must be terribly confusing for you sometimes," she said quietly.

I sighed. "What's that supposed to mean?" I asked wearily.

She, oddly enough, fell silent. I tried my best to ignore the warm prick of my feelings on the tip of my spine, but the stilting awkwardness she felt around me was too apparent to ignore. I looked up at her, frowning, and I was about to tumble over some hesitant apology before she decided to speak.

"Do you ever wonder if…no, I'm so sorry. This sounds awful of me," she said. But she continued on anyway. "Do you ever wonder if it…the bonds, without the Force, wouldn't be as real as they are now?"

I did laugh that time. It was a question I had asked myself so many times before in the past, but laughing in the face of it all felt good.

"Well, does your Force bond with Revan make your relationship with him any less real?" I asked her softly.

She said nothing for a while, and I began to wonder if I had offended her somehow. Instead, I felt an unspoken answer roll up my spine and tingle in my neck. When our gazes locked, I could see a prick of torment in her eyes, as though she hated herself for thinking what she thought but couldn't help but wonder it all the same.

"Not to me," she said, turning away from me toward the blank wall.

I nodded slowly. Another moment passed, and I endured Bastila's intent stare at my forehead. It felt as though she was trying to find a way into my mind without me knowing.

"You truly love them, don't you?" she declared, as though she was being bold.

I wanted to smile at the obviousness of it, and I wondered if the woman standing before me had not been the bright Bastila (or, I guess, on that same line, the brilliant Revan), just how long would it have taken her to figure it out?

"I'm not sure what it is like on the…the other end," I said. "It just makes it easier for me to know people. And if I know them then…how can't I love them?"

I looked away, too.

Love, affection, connections – chaos, in the end.

But somehow…I held on. Maybe I believed in it all too much to let go. Or maybe I felt it too deeply before to truly shut it all out and become a shell of cynicism and regret.

I had long ago decided that it all led back to the war. Everything in our lives, it all went back…to the war. Malachor V, and the deaths there. Revan and Alek and their fall. My escape from the darkness. Everything. It all rested upon the war.

"If the war had never happened," Bastila asked, clearly following the same train of thought. "Would any of this have ever occurred?

I didn't know.

"Maybe it would. Maybe it wouldn't have. Who's to know – it happened for a reason, I guess."

But that, for me, for Bastila, for anyone else involved…it would probably never would have been good enough. It brought people together. It tore others apart. In one fatal swoop, the galaxy had been re-forged into something that would never, ever be stable in the same way again.

It was why I would always end up leaving, in one way or another.

Bastila cleared her throat, and I looked up to her, expectant. Her mouth was in a tight line, but her eyes were softer. Truthful.

"Ember," she said. "T3 found you for a reason. I…I'm glad it ended up being you."

I tried to smile. I really, truly did, because I knew Bastila would be an asset to them. But when I did, I felt like it was an affront to her. A total freak of a lie. I was glad she was here, sure…but the woman still somehow had no idea what I meant to do.

Or maybe…maybe she didn't really care after all. Maybe all she needed me for was so she had an excuse to set out and find her Revan. Maybe this was her way of saying good-bye.

It struck me in a way, and even through the strange fog I was in, I couldn't help but feel that this was somehow supposed to be funny.

* * *

"_Look, could you please – oh, General Tythael. How are you?"_

"_Tythael! Where are you going?"_

"_Ember, hey, how– "_

"_Emma!"_

"_Em…"_

_

* * *

_

I remembered Revan. Rev. Alek (_Squint_, as Revan so loved to call him). And me, Em or Emma. My nickname.

I remembered the Academy. I remembered all the voices.

I remembered returning, the Academy destroyed. And I also remember feeling next to no remorse about it.

But when I stare at the _Ebon Hawk,_ it is like all my remorse has been displaced toward this single object. The beginning of it all, for Revan and Alek and me. And, for all three of us, the end too.

I stood in the all-reaching shadows of the large, cranky ship, holding nothing in my possession. I really had no possessions, except for the robes I was wearing and my silver lightsaber, white as the moon (conveniently, I mused, still on my nightstand). I could walk on right now, tell T3, still suitably on the ship, to start it up, and then fly away into the open air and space, never to see Dantooine again.

I could do that.

But no, I really couldn't, could I?

I sighed.

"Uh…you need something?"

A voice shook me back to my senses, and my head snapped up to see who was speaking. Some old man, darkly skinned, with a shock of a grey goatee. He was standing directly next to the _Hawk_, touching it even, and watching me with thoughtful brown eyes.

I raised my eyebrow. What was he doing here, conveniently close to the _Hawk_?

"You alright there? You look like you've seen a ghost." A strange smile. "I'm old, senile even, but not _that_ old!"

I could only stare at him, confused, as he laughed it up. After a moment, he took a few steps toward me.

"You a mute or something? Come on, girl, speak to me. I'm not that scary looking."

"Do you know this ship?" I asked.

A funny smile crossed his face, his cheery mustache curling as his lips moved.

"I might."

"I see," I said quietly.

"Do you own this ship?" he asked.

I nodded. He did that funny smile again.

"And how," he said. "Did you happen to come across it? Did you…run into it? In space, no less!" He laughed one sharp time, like a dog's bark.

I shrugged. "I don't remember."

"I see," he said. I didn't think he believed me.

You see, this was not quite turning out the way I was expecting. Everywhere I went I was dogged by the awkwardness of others, stifled in their attempts at conversation because of my tired silence. I didn't know who this man was and I was about to walk away.

But he spoke again.

"Well, then I knew there was a reason I came to Dantooine. I don't come here unless I have to," he said. "Not anymore."

I looked up toward him. Only then did I sense the Force signature rolling off of his aged soul. This man was a Jedi, I noticed with minor surprise. For all I knew, Bastila could have sent out some encrypted message to any Jedi she could possibly find, telling them to meet here, at Dantooine. Maybe they had known each other once before. Maybe he was even her Master.

"Why _did_ you come?" I asked. My face reddened – I hadn't meant to sound so sharp.

He didn't even twitch.

"Call it an old man's intuition," he muttered, so quietly I could barely hear it. Other than that, I didn't really know what else to say. He went back to staring at the Hawk and I was just there, standing around like a prop.

I was struck silent until he suddenly swirled around to face me. His dark eyes flashed.

My hands turned to fists. My arms and legs locked up. There was something, _something_…

I ventured to touch it, whatever it was, with the Force.

_Die, you corrupted soul, die, for you are nothing to this world but a dying light, an ember feeding on ash…_

And suddenly, I could feel _everything._ I fell to my knees for the starkness of it, tears springing to my eyes at the plain, white fear that tore through my body. The earth seemed to shake beneath me as I searched restlessly for the source.

_Visions of blood and silver, a sky marked black with death, the air hanging with the stench of deprivation and human failure. Drowning in crystal clear water, dying of thirst, so hungry but afraid to eat..._

"Block it out!" someone was shouting, but _I couldn't_. How could I do anything?

Was it my fear? Was I the one afraid?

"_Move, dammit_!"

Something cold pricked the back of my neck.

Only then did my survival instincts manage to break through the mess of white emotion streaming into my brain. I swung around with a powerful kick, knocking whoever stood behind me to the ground. My hands flew to my belt, but my lightsaber was still on my nightstand in my room.

_Oh no…_

On the ground was a man, eyes wild and fiery, the aura around him similar to the one around the man we had encountered on Telos…the man who had tried to kill Namiri.

The fear came rushing back, choking off my breath for the suddenness of it.

And then, a high-pitched scream drove knives through my ears, piercing my skull straight to my soul.

"Namiri!" I screamed. Before I could run, the attacker in front of me flew – my reflexes were quick, but I would inevitably fall…

I heard a buzz and a thump and after forcing my eyes open, and the old man was before me. Green scorched my vision like from some distant dream, and the attacker lay on the ground, eyes vacant. _Dead_, whispered the Force, _the man is dead but you did not kill him_.

The old man ran further forward with his green lightsaber. He turned back and gave me a look, but before I let him say anything, I was running too.

"Namiri!" I screamed again. "Namiri!"

I reached out to her, trying to find any sign of her, any trace, but I couldn't find her in the mess of emotion and feeling that was suddenly swarming and scratching at my heart.

The grasslands and its vast sky swept by me like a whirlwind, like a thousand green and blue lightsaber crystals flying into my eyes. I did not stumble. I did not look back. I ran, ignoring the cries and the sharp pains of my wobbly legs.

Finally, by the Force, _finally_, I saw her. She was running through the long grasses from darkly clad men.

"Run!" I shouted over the wind, the fear twisting in my gut_ hers_ more than mine. I winced, the feel of it tearing at my heart. Where were the others? Were they hurt? _Where were they_?

I took a haggard breath and let the Force flow through my pained legs, letting me run five times faster. The world spun – all I could feel was the pumping of my legs. All I could think of was Namiri's frightened face and my visions of blood, the voice that spoke of death.

"_Namiri_!" I shouted. Somehow, oh Gods, somehow I kept running for her, even though everything was spinning.

She looked up at me. In a last ditch effort, I Force pulled her toward me.

She tripped. The Force convulsed within me.

And my heart tore in two as I fell to protect her, the sun blotted out by the shadows of men.

* * *

**A/N:** Well…a cliffhanger will make you read the next chapter, at least. :P Heh. I told you it would be more actiony this time! Well, you know ,after you shuffle through the more boring stuff. Is all good, I guess.

And the wierd, between actiony interlude thingies? They are left to your assumptions. ;) If you find a load of mistakes, forgive me. I'm sick. D: But I'm doing my best. :)

Confused? Annoyed by something? Liked it?

Review then, my lovelies. It makes my day so much the better and YOU get to shout out how you feel! Everyone wins!!

And I'm just going to stop putting down hints to the next chapter. It changes half the time anyway. xD

Happy weekend everyone!


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